Valletta

Malta's history is as bloody and courageous as one can find. These desertified islands' position at the epicenter of the Mediterranean, and its possession of a deep-water harbor large enough to accommodate the largest ships, has made it a prime target for every strategy-minded empire-builder to ever work the Med. The islands are a miraculous cultural hodgepodge of, among others, the Phoenician, Greek, Carthaginian, Roman, Byzantine, Arab and, most recently, British Empires. And, of course, the Knights of St John, who settled here after being kicked off Cyprus.

Not Valletta, however. Valletta belongs to the Knights alone. Built with an eye to withstanding prolonged and ferocious Turkish sieges in the 16th century, it crams an entire capital city into a peninsula just over a kilometre long and three-quarters wide. And this baroque gem was largely completed in 15 years, between 1566 and 1581, the work of military engineer Francesco Laparelli and Maltese architect Gerolamo Cassar. It was reconstructed, stone by stone, in considerably less time after the Luftwaffe were done bombing it: you would never be able to tell that the entire city had been razed to the ground with massive loss of life.

Valletta is a place of contrasts: ringing silences and sudden crowds; mindblowing vistas and claustrophobic alleyways; elegant fascias festooned with TV aerials; Rococo campery and martial grimness. It is a city at once like, and unlike, any other, a true meld of Mediterranean cultures: as Middle-Eastern as it is Italian, as North African as it is British. Circumnavigation of the peninsula can be done in an hour or so, but all routes are so crowded with historical and architectural marvels and foot-slowing viewpoints that youll have to wear blinkers to do it in that time.

Recommended and written up by the magnificent Serena Mackesy.