Culture in Malta is not only in the museums. This page covers theatres, arts centres and historic houses across Malta and Gozo. They are places you go to see something on, or to look round a building that is still in use.
The paid museums and the archaeological sites are on their own pages. See museums and historic sites for those, and temples and prehistory for the temples.
Theatres and opera houses
The Manoel Theatre
One of the oldest theatres in Europe that is still in use. Grand Master António Manoel de Vilhena paid for it out of his own money and had it built in ten months. It opened on 19 January 1732 with a play called Merope.
The first name for it was the Teatro Pubblico. It was built, in the words used at the time, for the honest recreation of the people.
The main house seats 547. There are 51 boxes on three tiers and no seat is far from the stage. A studio theatre upstairs holds sixty. The building was restored between 2017 and 2021.
It is a working theatre and not a museum. The season runs from autumn into spring, with drama, opera and concerts. Guided tours run on weekday mornings and have to fit around rehearsals, so check the times before you go.
Two opera houses on one street
Teatru Astra and Teatru tal-Opra Aurora sit a few doors apart on the same street in Victoria. Each one belongs to a band club, and both clubs were founded in 1863. La Stella runs the Astra, which opened in 1968. Leone runs the Aurora, built in 1976, which seats 1,600 and is the largest indoor venue on the island.
Both stage a full opera in October, days apart, with imported soloists and a local chorus. For a town of this size that is unusual. Tickets sell out early and the two houses do not co-ordinate their dates.
A few of the most popular sites cannot be entered without a booking.
Arts centres
Spazju Kreattiv
A 16th century gun platform turned into an arts centre in 2000. The main theatre sits inside what used to be the water reservoir, and the vaults hold a cinema and a recital room. There are galleries on several floors.
The cinema shows art house films, documentaries and award winners rather than the usual releases. It is the main place to see a film that gets no general release here.
The Mediterranean Conference Centre
This was the Sacra Infermeria, the hospital of the Knights of St John. Work started on it in 1574. At its busiest it held more than 900 patients, and it was one of the best regarded hospitals in Europe.
The Great Ward runs to 155 metres and is one of the longest halls of its kind anywhere. The building was restored and reopened as a conference centre in 1979. It is not a museum and there is no ticket desk. To see the inside, go to a concert or an event held there.
Houses you can go inside
Palazzo Falson, Mdina
A medieval house near the top of Mdina, kept as its last owner left it. Olof Gollcher collected furniture, silver, armour, coins and paintings, and the house shows them in the rooms he used rather than in cases. You will also see the name written Palazzo Falzon.
It passed to a heritage foundation when he died in 1962 and opened to the public in 2007. It is closed on Mondays. There is a small roof cafe with a view over the walls.
Casa Rocca Piccola
A palace built in 1580 for a knight of the Order, and still the home of the family that owns it. About fifty rooms are on the tour, along with a chapel, a library and the air raid shelters cut into the rock underneath.
Guided tours run on the hour through the day, every day except Sunday. Because people live there, you see it as a house rather than as a display.
Free to walk into
The National Library
The Bibliotheca holds the archives of the Order of St John, going back to the twelfth century. The reading room is worth going in for. It is tall, galleried and quiet, and it has not changed much.
Anyone can walk in. Take an ID card or a passport to the desk and you are given a visitor pass. There is no charge. It closes on Sundays and public holidays, and it shuts at lunchtime in summer.
Il-Ħaġar, Gozo
A museum on the square beside St George’s Basilica. It holds the art and silver of the parish, along with the music archive of the composer Joseph Vella. It runs over four floors and there is a lift.
Entry is free and they ask for a donation. It opens daily from 9am to 5pm. The roof terrace looks over the square and most people miss it.
Getting a ticket
Every venue on this page sells its own tickets. There is no single box office for the islands and no pass that covers more than one of them.
The Gozo opera nights in October sell out weeks ahead, and so does anything at the Manoel over Christmas. Most other things can be had in the week before, and often on the door.
Dates for the festivals that use these buildings are on the annual events page. What is confirmed for the coming weeks is on the events calendar.