The town itself is a joy to stroll around in, many of the alleys really give the sense that nothing has changed here for more than a millennium since the Arabs were here. The main attractions are the cathedral whose design inspired many of the other churches in Malta, the cathedral museum, and the views.
St Pauls Cathedral The cathedral was built after the earthquake of 1693 destroyed the original Norman structure built in the 12th century. Like the Cathedral of St. John in Valletta its floor is covered with intricately inlaid marble gravestones belonging to Maltese aristocracy. Also noteworthy is the impressive wallpainting at the back of the cathedral depicting the shipwrecking of st Paul on Malta. Interestingly the face has two clocks (one for time and one for date). There is an apocryphal (though much repeated and widely published) story that the reasoning was to have one clock which showed the correct time and one which serves to confuse the devil.
Cathedral museum. The quaint cathedral museum houses a variety of different small collections. Perhaps the the most important is a beautiful set of woodcut prints The Life of the Virgin by Albrecht Dürer. Furthermore it has a collection of the cathedral's attributes and a tiny display on the 19th century priests who took the first initiative to develop Maltese in a written form. Amazingly, as it was never in the colonial power's interest and the Maltese had to do without writing in their own language since the Arabs left in the 11th century. The entire archive of the inquisition in Malta, which was only banned by Napoleon the day he invaded, is kept here, but is unfortunately not on public display. If you come with serious credentials you may be able to persuade Father Michael to show them to you.
Natural history museum
Medieval museum
Roman villa
The view from the city walls makes it plain why this site was chosen in ancient times, one has a commanding view over most of the island from here.
The Most Frequently Asked Travel Questions about Mdina
Where To Stay & Best Hotels in Mdina - updated May 2024
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Mdina Travel Guide from Wikitravel. Many thanks to all Wikitravel contributors. Text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0, images are available under various licenses, see each image for details.
