Day 51 Valletta

After the overview yesterday, we set out to see this fantastic old city that was designed in a grid, so it is pretty easy to find things. However, it's on hills like San Francisco which makes walking more challenging.

The main cathedral is named after the Knights' patron, John the Baptist. It is a real contradiction with the outside looking like a military fortress and the inside redone so now it's very opulent baroque.

Outside St. Johns:

No flash allowed inside the cathedral:

Maybe it symbolizes how the Knights started simple and pure but over time became materialized and power hungry. Successive Grand Masters decorated this church to rival the best in Europe and succeeded. A massive painting of the beheading of John the Baptist hangs in the church done by Caravaggio. He had escaped from Rome for killing a nobleman to here and spent a year in training to become a Knight. After passing the first hurdle, he was allowed out of the convent, but he couldn't handle the freedom and got defrocked and thrown in jail for wounding another knight. He escaped the prison and went back to Italy.
 
Almost next door was the National Archeological Museum, where we learned about the 8000 year history of the islands. Until 9000BC they were connected to Europe; then when the glaciers melted, they were separated from Sicily by 60 miles of sea. So much history, but the time line tells some of the story!

We had lunch in the square near St. Johns and then to the WW II bunker where the war to save Malta was directed. The Lascaris War Rooms are a fascinating restoration of a structure that saved Malta from falling to the axis, helped in defeating Rommel, and directed the invasion of Italy. Malta was continuously bombed for 157 days, 3 times longer than the London bombing. It defended itself with very few aircraft, skillful strategy, and the use of a new device that the Germans did not know they had -radar.

War room showing radar:

They did this while nearly starving because of the difficulty of getting supplies into the island. This is the only group -The people of Malta - ever awarded the British Order of St. George because the whole population suffered and fought so bravely.