Malta (island)

• 1. Introduction

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  Malta is an island in the Mediterranean Sea, positioned directly south of Italy and north of Libya, measuring just 27 kilometres long and 14.5 kilometres wide. Yet within that modest footprint, some of the oldest free-standing structures on Earth still stand. Human beings have lived here since around 5200 BC. So the questions worth asking are these: how did such a small place accumulate so many layers of history, so many different rulers, and so many different peoples? And what does it look like to live on an island where nearly every available piece of land has been converted into a single, continuous urban zone?

  The island sits on something called the Malta plateau, a shallow shelf that was once a land bridge connecting Sicily to North Africa. As sea levels rose after the last ice age, that bridge slowly disappeared beneath the water, leaving Malta as an isolated outcrop caught between the Eurasian and African tectonic plates. That geography shaped everything that followed.

• 2. The First Builders

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  Around 3500 BC, a culture of megalithic temple builders either arrived on or emerged from Malta's early Neolithic population. What they left behind includes temples at Ħaġar Qim and Mnajdra, structures that rank among the oldest free-standing buildings in the world. Stone Age hunters or farmers had arrived from Sicily around 5200 BC, and early Neolithic settlements have been found both in open areas and inside caves, including one called Għar Dalam.

  After 2500 BC, something unusual happened. The island was depopulated. Then Bronze Age settlers arrived, occupying sites such as Borġ in-Nadur. These newcomers built the first fortifications ever constructed on Malta. The sequence, Stone Age arrivals, then megalith builders, then a gap, then Bronze Age settlers with their defences, suggests the island was already attractive enough to fight over, even before any empire took notice of it.

• 3. Rulers and Sieges

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  The Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Romans, Byzantines, and Arabs each controlled Malta before the County of Sicily took possession in 1091. In 1192, Tancred, King of Sicily, created Margaritus of Brindisi the first Count of Malta, one of the more obscure but specific milestones in the island's administrative history.

  The most dramatic rupture came in 1530, when Malta, along with Gozo and Tripoli in North Africa, was handed to the Order of Saint John. The Order held the island for over 250 years, and in 1565 it faced the test that would define that entire era. An Ottoman invasion, which came to be known as the Great Siege of Malta, was repelled by the Order and the Maltese together. The Order responded to that near-miss by building extensively, including the capital city of Valletta.

  Napoleon's occupation in 1798 was brief. He arrived on the 12th of June and left on the 18th of June, staying at Palazzo Parisio in Valletta. The French forces he left behind remained until the Maltese rebelled against their rule, at which point the British stepped in. By 1800, Malta had become a British protectorate, and a colony shortly after.

• 4. Economy and the Sea

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  Until 1800, Malta's exports rested on cotton, tobacco, and its shipyards. Under British control, the economy pivoted toward Malta Dockyard, which provided support for the Royal Navy, most critically during the Crimean War of 1854. The opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 brought a surge of civilian shipping through the Mediterranean. Ships stopping at Malta's docks for refuelling fed a growing entrepôt trade.

  By the end of the 19th century that engine was slowing. Merchant ships with longer ranges needed to stop less often. By the 1940s the economy had reached a serious crisis. World War II paradoxically reversed the decline, because the island needed to be rebuilt afterward.

  Film production became a later and less expected contributor. The first film shot on Malta was Sons of the Sea in 1925. Since then, over 100 other films have been partially or fully shot there, including Midnight Express in 1978, Gladiator in 2000, and World War Z in 2013. Today the economy depends substantially on foreign trade, including Malta Freeport at Marsaxlokk, which ranked as the 11th busiest container port in Europe by trade volume in 2008.

• 5. Language and People

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  Maltese, the main language of the island, is a Semitic language descended from the now-defunct Siculo-Arabic dialect of southern Italy. It absorbed substantial vocabulary from Sicilian, Italian, some French, and increasingly English. The hybrid character of Maltese was shaped by a long period of Maltese-Sicilian urban bilingualism that gradually transformed rural speech, a process that ended in the early 19th century when Maltese became the vernacular of the entire native population.

  The Eurobarometer records that 100% of the island's population speaks Maltese. English is spoken by 88%, Italian by 66%, and French by 17%. That spread makes Malta one of the most multilingual countries in the European Union. Even so, 86% of the population expressed a preference for Maltese in a survey on language attitudes, compared with 12% who preferred English. Italian television channels from Mediaset and RAI still reach the island and remain popular.

  The population of Malta stood at 409,259 according to the government's estimate from 2013, representing about 91.6% of the country's total population. The largest city is Birkirkara, with a population of 22,319. Valletta, the capital, holds a comparatively small population of 6,675.

• 6. Climate and the Urban Landscape

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  Valletta has the warmest winters of any capital city in Europe, with average daytime temperatures of around 16 degrees Celsius in January and February. Annual sunshine hours total around 3,000, one of the highest figures in Europe. In December, London records about 37 hours of sunshine while Malta records around 160.

  Nearly all of that sunlight falls on a place that functions, by multiple measures, as a single continuous city. Eurostat classifies Malta Island as a single Larger Urban Zone. The United Nations estimates that about 95% of Malta is urban area, and that proportion grows each year. The landscape is defined by low hills with terraced fields, and the highest point on the island, Ta' Dmejrek near Dingli, reaches 253 metres. There are no permanent rivers or lakes, though some watercourses, such as those at Ras ir-Raħeb near Baħrija, carry fresh water throughout the year.

  The Central Bank of Malta was established by the Central Bank of Malta Act on the 17th of April 1968. Malta joined the European Union on the 1st of May 2004, and adopted the euro on the 1st of January 2008, completing an economic integration that had been building since the island became independent in 1964.