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Eight easy-going questions about the essentials of Malta, an island country with a big story. Everyone can join in, whatever their age.
Harbour stroller 0–3 · Old-town explorer 4–6 · Practically Maltese 7–8
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Malta gets around 3,000 hours of sunshine a year, about twice as much as cities in northern Europe, and most of its rain falls in autumn and winter. Snow is so rare that the last snowfall on record dates from 1962, and when people thought they saw snow at the end of 2014, it turned out to be soft hail.
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Only about 80 km of sea, called the Malta Channel, lies between Malta and Sicily, and ferries carry people and cars across it. During the last ice age, when the sea was much lower, Malta was joined to Sicily by land.
Photo: edited by M.Minderhoud, Wikimedia Commons, Public domain.
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In 2025 only two people lived on Comino all year round, and a priest and a police officer come over from the nearby island of Gozo. The island, named after the spice cumin, is also a bird sanctuary, but on summer days boats bring crowds of swimmers to its turquoise lagoon.
Photo: Sudika, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0.
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The eyes are said to protect the fishermen at sea, and they may go back to an ancient custom of the Phoenicians, seafaring traders who reached Malta thousands of years ago. Many boats also have a painted band shaped like a moustache, whose colour once showed which town the boat came from.
Photo: -jkb-, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0.
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The guns of the Saluting Battery fire every day except Sunday, and long ago the noon shot let ships in the harbour set their clocks to the right time. Eight working copies of old 19th-century guns stand there today, and visiting cruise ships can even ask for a salute of seven shots.
Photo: Frank Vincentz, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0.
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Melite means 'honey-sweet', perhaps because of Malta's own kind of honey bee, which lives nowhere else in the world. In 2024 that little bee was named Malta's national insect, and it even appeared on a special €2 coin.
Photo: Terry Caselli Photography, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.
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Apart from a few residents' cars, emergency vehicles, wedding cars and horse-drawn carriages, traffic stays outside, so its narrow lanes are wonderfully quiet. The town has never grown beyond its ancient walls, and only about 240 people lived inside them in 2024.
Photo: Frank Vincentz, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0.
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Popeye Village took about seven months to build, with logs and planks shipped in from the Netherlands and roof shingles from Canada. Today it is a small fun park by the sea, where children can climb through the crooked houses and meet Popeye and Olive Oyl.
Photo: Wusel007, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0.
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