Mdina

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  Mdina, the ancient walled city perched on a plateau in Malta's Western Region, holds an unlikely record: a population of just 250 people. For a place that was once a national capital, that number is almost absurd. Known today by the nickname the "Silent City," Mdina has spent the better part of five centuries watching the world move on without it. Its streets are narrow and maze-like, its architecture a collision of Norman stone and Baroque flourish, and its gates have been battered by Phoenicians, Romans, Arabs, Byzantines, Crusading Knights, Ottomans, French soldiers, and British colonisers. How does a city survive so many invasions and still stand? And why, after all of that, does it have only 250 residents? The answers reach back to a massacre in the year 870, to a single cavalry charge on a summer morning in 1565, and to a decision made in 1530 that quietly ended Mdina's reign as the island's beating heart.

• 2. Before the Walls

  ›

  Around the 8th century BC, Phoenician settlers established a colony on the plateau, calling it Ann after their name for the island of Malta itself. The site was a natural choice. The plateau was easily defensible, and Bronze Age communities had already recognised its value as a place of refuge long before the Phoenicians arrived.

  The Roman Republic took a different approach to naming. When they captured Malta in 218 BC, early in the Second Punic War, they renamed the settlement Melita, drawing on the Greek and Latin name for the island. This name was likely borrowed from the main Punic port on the Grand Harbour. Under Roman administration, the city was roughly three times the size of present-day Mdina, extending deep into what is now the suburb of Rabat.

  The most vivid story from this era comes from the Acts of the Apostles, which records that Paul the Apostle was shipwrecked on Malta in AD 60. The island's governor, Publius, greeted him. Christian legend adds that Paul cured Publius's sick father, and that the entire Maltese population then converted to Christianity. Publius, by this account, went on to become Bishop of Malta and later Bishop of Athens before being martyred in 112.

  The physical remains of that Punico-Roman city are sparse. The most significant are at the Domus Romana, where well-preserved mosaics, statues, and other objects were discovered. Fragments of a Temple of Apollo and sections of the city walls have also been excavated, but they are remnants of a much larger world that has since mostly vanished.

• 3. The Siege of 870

  ›

  By the early Middle Ages, the city had already been pulled inward. A retrenchment, a physical reduction of the city's perimeter, cut Melite down to roughly its present size. This kind of contraction was common across the Mediterranean at the time, done to make defensive walls shorter and therefore easier to hold. Whether the work was done by the Byzantine Empire around the 8th century, when Arab raids intensified, or by the Arabs themselves after their conquest, remains debated.

  The conquest, when it came, was brutal. In 870, Aghlabid forces from North Africa besieged Byzantine Melite, then governed by a man named Amros, probably the Greek name Ambrosios. The Aghlabid commander, Halaf al-Hadim, was killed during the fighting. His successor, Sawada Ibn Muhammad, was sent from Sicily to continue the siege. The exact length of the siege is not recorded, though it probably lasted weeks or months.

  When the city fell, the inhabitants were massacred, the churches were looted, and the marble from those churches was shipped to Tunisia to help build the castle of Sousse, known as the Ribat of Sousse. The writer Al-Himyari records that Malta remained almost uninhabited after this catastrophe until Muslims from Sicily and their slaves resettled the site in 1048 or 1049, building a new settlement called Madina.

  Archaeological evidence, however, suggests that a thriving Muslim community existed on the site even before that date, so 1048-49 may mark the year the city was formally founded and its walls were officially constructed rather than the moment settlers first arrived. The new city bore no resemblance to ancient Melite in its layout. The narrow, winding streets visible in Mdina today may still carry the imprint of that North African planning tradition.

• 4. The Losing of the Capital

  ›

  Roger I of Sicily took Medina after a short siege in 1091, and Malta was absorbed into the County of Sicily and later the Kingdom of Sicily under a succession of feudal lords. By the 15th century, the entire population of Malta was around 10,000, with town life confined mainly to Mdina, Birgu, and the Gozo Citadel. Even within that modest urban world, Mdina was struggling: by 1419, its suburban neighbour Rabat had already grown larger than the walled city itself.

  Governance during the Aragonese period rested on the Università, a communal body seated in Mdina that collected taxes and managed the island's limited resources. At various points during the 15th century, the town council sent complaints to its Aragonese overlords warning that Malta was exposed and vulnerable to raids from the sea.

  Those fears were justified. Hafsid invaders besieged the city in 1429, and while the exact number of those killed or enslaved is not recorded, the raid caused significant depopulation across the islands.

  The definitive blow to Mdina's status came in 1530, when the Order of Saint John arrived in Malta. The Maltese nobility ceremoniously handed the keys of the city to Grand Master Philippe Villiers de L'Isle-Adam. The gesture was formal and respectful, but the Order promptly settled at Birgu on the harbour rather than in Mdina. The capital moved, and Mdina's long retreat from prominence began. It has never recovered the standing it held before that year, and it is partly that loss that gave rise to the name by which it is known today: the Silent City.

• 5. One August Morning in 1565

  ›

  During the Great Siege of Malta in 1565, Mdina served as the base for the Order of St. John's cavalry. The city itself was not the main battlefield; that distinction belonged to Birgu and Senglea on the harbour. But on the 7th of August 1565, the cavalry rode out and struck the unprotected Ottoman field hospital.

  The effect was disproportionate to the size of the action. The Ottoman commanders, confronted with this unexpected attack on their rear, abandoned a major assault they had been preparing on the main fortifications at Birgu and Senglea. A cavalry raid on a field hospital changed the momentum of the siege.

  Later that same season, the Ottomans considered wintering in Mdina and turned their attention to taking it. The city's defenders had a problem: they lacked the ammunition to make a credible stand. Their solution was to fire their cannon at far greater range than was actually effective, creating the impression of overwhelming firepower and plentiful supplies. The Ottomans were deceived and abandoned their plans to take the city.

  Afterward, a Maltese military engineer named Girolamo Cassar drew up plans to reduce Mdina's size by half and convert it into a pure fortress. The city's nobles objected, and the plans were shelved. The city remained a city, not a bastion. A generation later, in the mid-17th century, the large De Redin Bastion was added to the land front, though the city's basic character was preserved.

• 6. Earthquake and Baroque Revival

  ›

  The 1693 Sicily earthquake struck Mdina hard. The 13th-century Cathedral of St. Paul was partially destroyed, though remarkably no casualties were reported. The cathedral was rebuilt by Lorenzo Gafa in the Baroque style, completed between 1697 and 1703.

  The broader renovation of Mdina came in 1722, when newly elected Grand Master António Manoel de Vilhena issued orders on the 3rd of November for a comprehensive restoration. He entrusted the work to Charles François de Mondion, a French architect and military engineer, who brought strong French Baroque elements into a city that was still predominantly medieval in character.

  The transformation was substantial. Large portions of the fortifications were rebuilt from scratch. The old Castellu di la Chitati, a castle that had stood at the southeast corner of the city since at least the medieval period, was demolished to make way for Palazzo Vilhena. The original main gate was walled up entirely, and a new Mdina Gate was constructed nearby. Several public buildings also appeared during this period, including the Banca Giuratale and the Corte Capitanale. The last significant addition to the city's fortifications, the Despuig Bastion, was completed in 1746.

• 7. Revolution at the Gates

  ›

  French forces captured Mdina on the 10th of June 1798 during their invasion of Malta, meeting little resistance. A French garrison was installed in the city. What followed, however, was swift and violent. On the 2nd of September 1798, a Maltese uprising began. The very next day, rebels entered Mdina through a sally port and killed the entire garrison of 65 men.

  Those two days in September marked the start of a two-year uprising and blockade against the French occupation. The Maltese established a National Assembly, which held its meetings in Mdina's Banca Giuratale, the same building constructed during the Vilhena renovation decades earlier. By 1800, the French surrendered, and Malta became a British protectorate.

  The British era brought one notable connection to the outside world: from 1883 to 1931, the Malta Railway linked Mdina with Valletta, giving the silent city a brief and unusual pulse of industrial-age movement.

• 8. The Silent City Now

  ›

  Mdina today hosts around 1.5 million tourists a year, a figure that dwarfs its permanent population of 250. Cars are almost entirely banned from its streets; only a limited number of residents, emergency vehicles, wedding cars, and horses are permitted inside. The restriction reinforces what its walls and its history have long implied: this is not a place built for the speed of the modern world.

  Property in Mdina largely continues to pass from generation to generation within the same families, a pattern that has kept both the physical fabric and the social character of the city unusually intact. The city's architecture reflects its layered past: Norman and Baroque buildings stand alongside private palaces, most of which remain in use as homes rather than museums.

  Mdina's Local Council is directly elected and has five members. The Nationalist Party has held the majority of seats since the council's founding, and all of its mayors have come from that party. Peter Joseph Sant Manduca, the Count of Sant Manduca, has served as Mayor since 2003.

  The city appears on UNESCO's tentative list of World Heritage Sites, and an extensive restoration of its walls was undertaken between 2008 and 2016. Its name, derived from the Arabic word madina meaning "town" or "city," is shared with the island's ancient history and with every narrow street that still bends and doubles back on itself in patterns laid down by settlers who arrived nearly a thousand years ago. The football club founded within its orbit in 2006, the Mdina Knights, plays in the third division of the Malta Football Association.