Valletta

Valletta sits on a golden peninsula between two natural harbours, laid out in one go by the Knights of Malta after the great siege of 1565. The whole city is honey-coloured limestone: straight streets, flights of steps, and the sea at the end of nearly every one of them. From the Upper Barrakka Gardens the Grand Harbour opens up below, all bastions and ships, and the Saluting Battery still fires its cannon at noon. Behind a plain front, St John's Co-Cathedral is gilded from floor to vault, its pavement a carpet of marble tombstones and two Caravaggios on the walls. Fort St Elmo and the National War Museum tells the story of both sieges, the Ottoman one and the bombing of 1942. The island speaks Maltese, the only Semitic language in Europe and the only one written in Latin script. The sea is everywhere and deep blue, and the red sand of Ramla Beach waits on neighbouring Gozo.