The luzzu boats
Hundreds of painted boats in one harbour.
Seancarlgrech — CC BY-SA 3.0 · RyanCaruana — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Renata Apan — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Renata Apan — CC BY-SA 4.0
The quayside restaurants all serve fresh fish at similar prices; ask for lampuki, Malta's autumn fish, or grilled fish by weight — and the places in the back lanes are cheaper and quieter.
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The fishing village that makes Malta's most famous photograph: Marsaxlokk sits on the southeastern bay, its harbour crowded with hundreds of wooden luzzu boats painted blue, red and yellow — and on each prow a pair of carved eyes, the Phoenician eyes of Osiris that fishing families have painted for thousands of years to guard the boat, a tradition that arrived from Phoenicia and never stopped. The village's name is itself Phoenician-Arabic: marsa, a harbour, and xlokk, the southeasterly wind, the sirocco — and here the Ottoman fleet anchored in 1565 and Napoleon's forces in 1798. Sunday is the appointment: the great fish market runs the whole waterfront from early morning — the night's catch laid on ice among vegetable and clothing stalls — and afterwards the quayside fish restaurants fill with Maltese rather than tourists. On other days the village is quiet and the harbour unchanged, which photographers prefer.
Hundreds of painted boats in one harbour.
The night's catch along the whole front.
Marsaxlokk, Malta