St John’s Co-Cathedral
A Caravaggio inside
Built in a single generation by the Knights of St John, Valletta packs more than 300 monuments into a peninsula you can cross on foot in twenty minutes — Europe’s most concentrated open-air museum, and a living city still.
They called it “a city built by gentlemen, for gentlemen.” After the Great Siege of 1565, the Knights of St John raised an entirely new capital on the bare rock of the Sciberras peninsula — a grid of golden limestone streets running straight down to the harbour, the first planned city in Europe.
A handful of places that define Valletta — each one worth building a day around.
Today those same streets brim with life: cafés spill onto baroque squares, the dome of St John’s Co-Cathedral hides a Caravaggio in its oratory, and from the Upper Barrakka Gardens the noonday gun still booms out over the Grand Harbour, exactly as it has for two centuries.
