June 28 Mdina and farewell to our tour

 

This marathon day ended with a stroll through, and farewell dinner in, the ancient capital of Malta, Mdina. The city was founded as Maleth in around the C8th BC by Phoenician ‘settlers’ and was later renamed Melite (meaning honey sweet or maybe glorious, splendid) by the Romans. It was reduced to its present size during the Arab occupation of Malta when the city adopted its present name; derived from the Arabic word medina. The city remained the capital of Malta throughout the Middle Ages until the arrival of the Order of St. John in 1530 when the capital was shifted to Valetta. When that happened the population declined so much that people started to consider it a ghost town. It is from that time that Mdina’s nickname became the ‘Silent City’ – it has retained that name.

Mdina just before sunset

This restaurant is housed in what used to be gunpowder magazines for the main fortified bastion

After dinner we climbed the walls to look out over the lights of the new, modern city of Rabat which surrounds the old citadel. Quite spectacular and a fitting end to our tour to ancient, magnificent Malta which had started a couple of weeks ago in Sicily via the Aeolian Islands.