The Mdina Gate
Baroque, 1724 — and King's Landing's gate on screen.
R Muscat — CC BY-SA 2.0 · Bellina 09 — CC BY-SA 4.0 · NoelMalta — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Pacopac — CC BY-SA 4.0
Malta's old capital, and its name is Arabic: Mdina ruled the island for some two thousand years before Valletta was built — founded by the Phoenicians, enlarged by the Romans, then walled by the Arabs in the ninth century, who dug its ditch, shrank its footprint and gave it the name it still carries, before Malta's nobility settled its palaces, where their descendants remain. You enter through the Baroque Mdina Gate (1724) and the sound simply stops: no cars but those of its three hundred residents, narrow crooked lanes built deliberately to break the wind and confuse invaders, and honey-stone facades with brass door knockers and closed balconies — from which comes its name, the Silent City. On its northern wall a terrace looks over half of Malta to Valletta and the sea, and at its centre stands the Baroque St Paul's Cathedral under its dome. Evening is its finest hour: the coaches leave and the city becomes yours alone under the lamps — and King's Landing was filmed here in the first season of Game of Thrones.
Baroque, 1724 — and King's Landing's gate on screen.
Half of Malta, out to Valletta and the sea.
Built to break the wind and confuse invaders.
Mdina, Malta
Palazzo FalsonMdina's second-oldest building and the finest house to visit in it: Palazzo Fals2 minutes walk4.7
The Domvs RomanaA wealthy Roman house found by accident in 1881 while planting a tree: the Domvs3 minutes walk4.1
Collegiate Church of St PaulA Baroque church in the town of Rabat next to Mdina, built above the grotto wher7 minutes walk4.8
St Paul's CatacombsMalta's largest underground burial complex: the Rabat catacombs are a network of9 minutes walk4.2A direct bus of about forty minutes to the Rabat stop then a five-minute walk to the gate, or twenty minutes by taxi — and the town is small enough to walk entirely in an hour.
They were one city until the Arabs shrank the walls, leaving Mdina inside and Rabat — also an Arabic name — outside; Rabat today holds St Paul's Catacombs, the Domvs Romana and most of the area's restaurants.