Valletta compresses 7,000 years into 0.61 km²: temple builders working stone before the pyramids, a fortress city the Knights of St John cut from bare rock after 1565, and a harbour that absorbed 3,000 air raids. This route follows all three threads.
Malta's Neolithic finds fill the Auberge de Provence, the 1571 knights' inn: the Sleeping Lady from the Hypogeum, the Venus of Ħaġar Qim and the Tarxien figurines. Open daily 09:00-17:00, last entry 16:30.
A three-level burial complex cut into living rock around 3600-2500 BC that held some 7,000 dead. Only 80 visitors enter per day in groups of 10, and the ochre-painted Oracle Room carries a low voice through every chamber.
Four linked temples of 3600-2500 BC holding Malta's finest megalithic carving: spiral reliefs, a frieze of bulls and a sow with piglets, and the lower half of a colossal skirted statue. A raised walkway crosses the whole site.
Malta's capital until the Knights arrived in 1530, walled by the Arabs in the 11th century and rebuilt in Baroque after the 1693 earthquake. Fewer than 300 people live inside and cars are banned, so the alleys stay silent.
The star fort that held 28 days against the Ottomans in 1565 before its last defenders were cut down. Inside, the National War Museum runs from Bronze Age armour to the George Cross awarded to Malta in 1942. Open 09:00-17:00.
A ten-tonne bronze bell under a limestone cupola, unveiled in 1992 for the 7,000 who died in the 1940-43 siege. It tolls at noon across the harbour, beside a bronze catafalque of a fallen soldier laid out facing the open sea.
Chambers hacked 40 m below Upper Barrakka, where Eisenhower, Montgomery and Cunningham ran Operation Husky, the July 1943 invasion of Sicily. Plotting tables, the telephone exchange and wall maps stand as they were left.
The arcaded terrace built in 1661 as the Italian knights' private garden and opened to the public in 1824. Below it the Saluting Battery's guns still fire at noon and 16:00, a ritual kept since the age of sail.
One of the very few inquisitors' palaces anywhere open to the public, in use from 1574 to 1798: the tribunal hall, prison cells scratched with graffiti by the accused, and the Collachio quarter of knights' auberges outside.
The stone vedette on the tip of the Senglea bastion, carved with an eye, an ear and a crane's head to signify watchfulness, has guarded the harbour mouth since 1551. It faces Valletta's entire seaward wall across the water.
A 1580 palazzo still lived in by the de Piro family, with 16 rooms shown on guided tours: family silver, a sedan chair, and a 1930s air-raid shelter cut into the rock beneath the courtyard. Tours hourly 10:00-16:00.
The narrowest lane in the grid, where knights settled duels because it was too tight to retreat, and where British sailors drank through the 1950s. Faded bar signs and the old Egyptian Queen frontage still mark the doorways.