The Sacra Infermeria

The Order began in Jerusalem in the eleventh century as a hospice for pilgrims, and the care of the sick remained its stated purpose through five centuries of fighting. The infirmary was begun in 1574, within a decade of the city itself.

Every knight, the Grand Master included, was expected to serve in the wards. Patients had a bed each, which in the sixteenth century was remarkable, and ate off silver plate because silver was believed cleaner than pewter or wood.

Grand Master Nicolas Cotoner founded a school of anatomy and surgery here in 1676, one of the ancestors of the island’s medical school. The dissections took place in the building and the bodies came from the wards.

Under the British it remained a military hospital, and in the First World War the Gallipoli campaign sent well over a hundred thousand sick and wounded men through Malta’s hospitals, of which this was the largest. Bombing in the Second World War and years as a police headquarters followed.

The building was restored and reopened in 1979 as the Mediterranean Conference Centre, with the Great Ward as its main hall. When no conference is sitting it can usually be seen on request.

Because the building is a working conference centre, what you can see inside depends on what is booked. It hosts exhibitions and performances as well as conferences and private functions, and a public event is often the simplest way in. Otherwise the place to ask is the main entrance on Mediterranean Street. A few minutes in the Great Ward is enough: the scale is the thing to see, and it does not take long to register.

Most of what makes the Sacra Infermeria remarkable can be read from the street without a ticket: the length, the plainness, and the way the building steps down the slope towards the water. From across the Grand Harbour in the Three Cities it shows as one long block on the harbour edge near the mouth, and its size against the houses around it is easier to judge from there than from close to.

It stands at the quiet end of the peninsula, a few minutes along the shore from Fort St Elmo, so seeing it from outside costs nothing on the walk down the harbour side. The Siege Bell and the Lower Barrakka Gardens, where the walk ends, are a few minutes further on and a little downhill.