The cathedral's false dome
A ceiling painted to suggest a dome never built.
Matthew Benn โ CC BY-SA 4.0 ยท StefanM76 โ CC BY-SA 4.0 ยท Keith galea โ CC BY-SA 4.0 ยท Celiachen โ CC BY-SA 4.0
An Ottoman raid under Dragut took some five thousand Gozitans โ nearly the island's entire population โ into slavery in Libya; Gozo stood almost empty for years, which explains the obsession with fortification that followed.
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The citadel where all of Gozo once slept: the Cittadella crowns the hill at the island's centre above the town of Victoria, and it was the whole population's refuge โ law required them until 1637 to spend the night inside its walls for fear of corsair raids, and it had fallen once, in 1551, when the Ottomans carried off almost the entire island into slavery. The present walls were built by the Knights in the seventeenth century, and inside is a small city, half restored and half open ruins to walk through: Gozo's Baroque cathedral, whose ceiling is painted in false perspective to suggest a dome that was never built, the archaeology museum, the folklore house, the old prison with inscriptions its inmates cut into the walls, and the underground granaries. The best of it is the rampart walk: a free full circuit revealing all of Gozo โ its terraced fields, the enormous churches in every village, and its coast from north to south. Below lies Victoria with its market and It-Tokk square.
A ceiling painted to suggest a dome never built.
Inscriptions cut by its inmates.
Terraced fields, churches and coast.
Cittadella, Victoria (Rabat)