Friday, April 6, 2018 - Knights of St. John

Sliema Creek
Malta

For an island that is 27 km long by 16 km wide, Malta is packed with history. The Greeks, Romans, Turks, Corsairs, Spanish, French and British have all either invaded or laid claim here mainly because of it's handy proximity between Europe and North Africa. The land itself, a big rock with very little topsoil on which to grow crops, and, we hear, scorching summer temperatures, which we have seen nothing of, and very little fresh water was certainly not the enticement.

The Grand Master's of the Knights palace.  Considering they agreed to poverty, they sure built and lived in lovely, huge places.

The Auberge de Castille that housed the group of knights from that area.  Not bad!

The courtyard of the Grand Master's Palace.

One of the more exciting and desperate stories was the Great Siege of 1565 when the Knights of St. John held off the Turks by the skin of their teeth.  Valletta, the capitol is full of plaques identifying  some beautiful auberges for the different langues of knights who were categorized according to the country they were from.  Here in Sliema Creek we are surrounded by forts, towers and walls built by the Knights of St. John either in preparation for the siege attack or afterward to prevent such hardship in later anticipated attacks.

From Fort Manoel to Valletta and Fort Elmo.

The chapel at Fort Manoel was almost completely destroyed by bombs in WWII.  It was the first of the site to be lovingly restored.

The Knights of St. John were originally hospitaliers.  We went to a great museum in a series of tunnels and rooms that housed an original hospital.  This building, beside Fort Manoel was a 18th C hospital for victims of the plague and other epidemics.

Built after the siege as a fort and a hospital, we look at Fort Manoel from our mooring.  Napoleon's navy defeated it in short order.  It WWII it was used as a submarine base and was bombed heavily.  It is being restored currently.

These huge elevated stone tops cap enormous caverns used to store grain during the siege.

The grounds are littered with them.  Hard to imagine the planning that went into surviving the siege.

Peter and I both read The Great Siege, Malta 1565 by Ernle Bradford, a rollicking and gruesome page-turner that reads like fiction and develops the character and setting in a way that has made the island come alive for us.  We have explored forts, walked the ramparts and placed the Turks and Knights on hilltops and towns.  It makes me appreciate again what a wonderful education travelling can be!

Fort Rinella guarding one side of the Grand Harbour.  The harbour had three forts surrounding it at the time of the siege.