🇲🇹 Malta
Valletta
Valletta (population 6,500 — the least populated European Union capital; one of the smallest capital cities in the world by area (0.61 km²); the capital of the Republic of Malta — the island nation of 542,000 in the centre of the Mediterranean, 93 km south of Sicily) is the most concentrated historic capital in Europe: the entire city of Valletta (built on the Sciberras Peninsula between the Grand Harbour and Marsamxett Harbour) was constructed in a single campaign beginning in 1566 following the Great Siege of Malta of 1565, and the entire city is a UNESCO World Heritage Site (1980). Valletta was built by the Order of St. John (the Knights Hospitaller — the military-religious order founded in Jerusalem c. 1099 CE to care for sick pilgrims; subsequently the most effective naval and military force in the Christian Mediterranean; the Order held Malta from 1530 to 1798; the Great Siege of Malta (May 18 to September 8, 1565) — the Ottoman Empire's attempt to capture Malta (the 40,000-strong Ottoman force besieging the 700 Knights of St. John and 6,000-8,000 Maltese soldiers for 112 days; the Knights' resistance of the siege is one of the decisive military events of the 16th century: the Ottoman failure at Malta halted the westward expansion of the Ottoman Empire in the Mediterranean) was the founding trauma that led to the construction of the new fortified city of Valletta. St. John's Co-Cathedral (built 1572-1578 by the Order of St. John) houses Caravaggio's largest painting ever created (The Beheading of Saint John the Baptist, 1608 — the only painting signed by Caravaggio (he signed it in the blood pouring from the neck of St. John)), and Caravaggio's second large Valletta painting (Saint Jerome Writing, 1608). Malta's prehistoric Megalithic Temples (the Ħaġar Qim, Mnajdra and Tarxien temples — among the world's oldest free-standing stone structures (3600-2500 BCE), older than Stonehenge and the Egyptian pyramids) are the most significant prehistoric monuments in the central Mediterranean.