In 1565 an Ottoman fleet arrived off Malta and tried to take the islands from the Knights of St John. The siege ran from May to September.
The Knights held on. Most of the places it was fought over are still standing, and you can walk through them in a day.
What happened in 1565
The fleet landed in May. The Knights had a few hundred knights of their own and several thousand Maltese soldiers and villagers.
They were heavily outnumbered. The Grand Master in charge was Jean Parisot de Valette, who was about seventy at the time.
The first target was Fort St Elmo, on the tip of the peninsula where Valletta now stands. It was small and everyone expected it to fall in a few days.
It held for about a month. That month gave the forts behind it time to prepare.
When St Elmo fell the attack moved across the harbour to Birgu and Senglea. Those two held out through the summer. A relief force crossed from Sicily in September and the Ottoman fleet left on 8 September.
The places you can still visit
Fort St Elmo sits at the far end of Valletta and is open to visitors. It is the clearest place to understand why the harbour mattered so much, because you can see both sides of it from the walls.
Birgu, also called Vittoriosa, is across the water in the Three Cities. The streets behind the waterfront are narrow and largely unchanged, and Fort St Angelo stands at the end of the point. Senglea is the next peninsula along and has a view back at all of it.
None of these are far apart. The ferry from Valletta to Birgu takes a few minutes and runs through the day.
Why Valletta was built
Valletta was started the year after the siege, in 1566, and named after Valette. It was built as a fortress city on the peninsula that had nearly been lost.
It has walls on every side and a grid of straight streets. Before 1565 there was almost nothing there.
Victory Day is 8 September
The end of the siege is still marked. 8 September is Victory Day, one of Malta’s fourteen public holidays, and there is a rowing regatta in the Grand Harbour. If you are here in early September it is worth going down to the water for it.
