Central and Northern Malta

Overview

Central and Northern Malta is the upper two thirds of the main island, from the Three Villages on the inland edge of the conurbation up to the ferry pier at Ċirkewwa. It holds two things the rest of the archipelago does not: the old walled capital at Mdina, and nearly all of Malta’s usable sand.

It splits cleanly in two. Inland sits the historic core: Mdina, capital of Malta from antiquity until the Order of St John moved to Birgu in 1530 and still home to only 242 residents in July 2024, plus Rabat with its Roman and early Christian burial grounds, Mosta and its enormous dome, Dingli above Malta’s highest cliffs, and the citrus villages of Attard, Balzan and Lija. The other half is coastal: the resort strip at Buġibba and Qawra, the sandy bays at Golden Bay, Għajn Tuffieħa and Mellieħa, and the wind-scoured ridges of Marfa and Majjistral.

Population is concentrated on the coast. St Paul’s Bay, which takes in Buġibba, Qawra, Xemxija and Burmarrad, was the most populated settlement in the country at the 2021 census and stood at 38,844 residents in July 2024, roughly doubling to about 60,000 between June and September.

For the rest of the island see Malta, Valletta and the Grand Harbour, Southern Malta and Gozo and Comino.

History & character

The region’s history is essentially Mdina’s history, with everything else arranged around it.

From Melite to Madīnah

The plateau has been occupied since prehistory because it was defensible. The Phoenicians founded a colony there around the 8th century BC, Rome took it in 218 BC and renamed it Melite, and that city was about three times the size of the walled town you walk into today, spilling across much of modern Rabat. A retrenchment wall, traditionally credited to the Arabs but now more often to the Byzantines, cut it to its present footprint. In 870 the Aghlabids sacked it, and the site lay largely empty until it was resettled in 1048 or 1049 as Madīnah, from which the modern name comes.

Losing the capital

When the Order of St John arrived in 1530 the nobles handed over the keys, then watched the knights settle at Birgu instead. Mdina served as the Order’s cavalry base during the Great Siege of 1565, when a raid on the unprotected Ottoman field hospital helped break a major assault on the harbour forts. The 1693 Sicily earthquake brought down much of the 13th-century cathedral, rebuilt in Baroque form by Lorenzo Gafà between 1697 and 1703, and from 1722 Grand Master António Manoel de Vilhena had the French engineer Charles François de Mondion insert Baroque gates and public buildings into a still-medieval town. In September 1798 Maltese rebels killed the French garrison, and the National Assembly of the uprising met here.

The British century

The landscape’s other defining feature is the Victoria Lines, a 12 km chain of forts, batteries and infantry walls along the Great Fault from Madliena in the east through Mosta to Binġemma above Rabat, begun in 1875 and renamed in 1897 for Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee. The linking walls were finished in November 1899, exercises the following May showed the whole thing was of dubious defensive value, and by 1907 it was abandoned. Mosta’s Rotunda belongs to the same century: built by parishioners between 1833 and the early 1860s, it took a German bomb through the dome on 9 April 1942 during Mass without it exploding.

Everything on the north coast is newer. Buġibba was open ground until rapid development began in the 1960s, and is now a resort of hotels, bars, nightclubs and a casino around a promenade square.

See & do

Mdina and Rabat

Mdina is the region’s set piece and takes half a day. Cars are barred except for a few residents and emergency vehicles, which is where the nickname the Silent City comes from, and about 1.5 million people a year pass through the gate. St Paul’s Cathedral and the Cathedral Museum next door share a combined ticket at €15 for adults and €10 for students and over-60s, free for accompanied children of 12 and under, open Monday to Saturday 09:30 to 16:30 and closed on Sundays and public holidays. Palazzo Falson on Villegaignon Street, a historic house museum, charges €12.50 for adults and €6 for students and seniors, opens Tuesday to Sunday with last entry at 16:00, and does not admit under-sixes.

Just outside the walls in Rabat, St Paul’s Catacombs are the earliest and largest archaeological evidence of Christianity on the island: more than 30 hypogea, the main complex covering over 2,000 square metres and including rock-cut tables used for commemorative meals. Admission is €6 for adults and €4.50 for concessions, and the site was the first in Malta to receive the European Heritage Label.

Mosta and the centre

The Mosta Rotunda is the region’s other essential building: modelled on the Pantheon by Giorgio Grognet de Vassé, walls about 9.1 m thick, a dome roughly 40 m across inside, and the casing of a bomb identical to the one that pierced it in 1942 in the sacristy.

Between Mosta and Attard, the old RAF airfield at Ta’ Qali holds a crafts village of converted military buildings, the Malta Aviation Museum and a national park. San Anton Gardens in Attard, open to the public since 1882, surround the president’s residence with ponds, an aviary and trees planted by visiting heads of state.

Cliffs, walls and the film set

Dingli Cliffs sit on a plateau about 230 m above the sea with views to the uninhabited islet of Filfla, and Buskett Gardens lie in the valley below. The Victoria Lines make a long inland walk: much of the wall has collapsed, but stretches in open country survive.

Popeye Village at Anchor Bay is the 1980 film set turned family attraction, 3 km from the Mellieħa village core. High season, 1 June to 30 September, runs 09:30 to 18:00 at €25 for adults and €16 for children aged 3 to 12 and pensioners; mid season, May plus 1 October to 5 November, is €18 and €14; low season, 6 November to 30 April, is €15 and €12.50.

On the resort strip, the Malta National Aquarium at Qawra is the reliable wet-weather option with children.

Towns & cities

The inland towns

Mdina is a walled town of 242 people that empties of day visitors by evening. Rabat, immediately outside the gate, is the working town of 12,329 residents that grew on top of the Roman city.

Mosta, at 25,379 people, is dense, commercial and hard to park in, and buses to Buġibba, St Paul’s Bay, Qawra, Mġarr, Ċirkewwa and Mellieħa all pass through it. The Three Villages of Attard, Balzan and Lija are the quiet, leafy alternative, with 12,988, 5,022 and 3,785 residents. Attard’s motto refers to its flower gardens and citrus orchards, and Lija’s fireworks in the first week of August are the best known on the island. Naxxar, 18,063 residents over 11 square kilometres, runs from its plateau centre down to the coast at Baħar iċ-Ċagħaq and Salina, and Dingli, 3,950 people at about 230 m, is the highest village on the island.

The coast, honestly

St Paul’s Bay is not one place but a council of 14.47 square kilometres covering Buġibba, Qawra, Xemxija, Burmarrad and Wardija, and the least Maltese in feel: of 38,844 residents in July 2024, 23,897 held foreign nationality.

Mellieħa, 14,232 people on hills above the island’s largest sandy bay, is the better northern base: a real village core on the ridge, beaches below, and the Marfa peninsula and Ċirkewwa a short drive away. Its council also covers Manikata and Selmun. Mġarr, inland on the west with 5,336 residents, is the farming village behind Golden Bay.

Food & drink

Eating divides along the same line as everything else. The Buġibba and Qawra promenade is a parade of tourist-facing restaurants and bars, many showing British football, and the standard is what you would expect of a strip that turns over its guests every week. Inland, in the village cores of Rabat, Mosta, Naxxar and the Three Villages, you eat alongside residents.

What to look for

Rabbit is the dish the region is genuinely known for, and the Imnarja feast at Buskett on 29 June is built around it: hundreds arrive the evening before to eat rabbit stewed in wine, listen to folk singing and stay for the agricultural show next morning. It is on inland village menus all year. Pastizzi, the flaky pastry parcels filled with ricotta or mushy peas, are a bakery item rather than a restaurant one, and ftira, the ring-shaped Maltese bread, turns up as a filled sandwich at beach kiosks.

Produce and markets

The farmland behind Mġarr and Manikata is the productive part of the island: grapes, tomatoes, onions, melons, oranges, pomegranates and strawberries come out of these valleys, along with honey. Much of it is traded through the Pitkalija, the national vegetable market at Ta’ Qali.

Several fish farms sit around 595 m offshore from Mistra Bay, so treat north-coast fish claims with some scepticism. For a fish lunch off a boat, the market at Marsaxlokk in the south is the better trip.

Nature

Malta is not a green island, and this region holds most of the exceptions.

Cliffs and woodland

Ta’ Dmejrek on the Dingli Cliffs is the highest point in Malta at 253 m above sea level. Below it, Buskett Gardens occupy 30 hectares in the valley of Wied il-Luq, one of the island’s very few woodlands, planted by the Knights as a hunting reserve and identified by BirdLife International as an Important Bird Area.

Wetland and restored forest

The Għadira Nature Reserve behind Mellieħa Bay is seven hectares of brackish lake and saltmarsh on the site of Punic and Roman salt pans, a Ramsar site and a Natura 2000 Special Area of Conservation, with around 140 migrating species recorded annually. It opens between September and May, on Monday, Wednesday and Friday 13:30 to 17:00 in winter and at weekends 10:00 to 16:00, free of charge.

Foresta 2000, on the ridge above the same bay beneath the 17th-century St Agatha’s Tower, is a restored Mediterranean woodland begun in 1995 in which about 20,000 trees and shrubs have been planted. It is open all year, 24 hours a day, free, with wildflowers and orchids in spring and roosting marsh harriers and honey buzzards in autumn.

Coast and sea

The Majjistral Nature and History Park, declared in 2007, protects six kilometres of coast between Golden Bay and Il-Prajjet inside a Natura 2000 Special Area of Conservation, taking in sand dunes, clay slopes, garrigue and temporary freshwater rock pools. It is named after the majjistral, the northwesterly wind. The Marfa Ridge runs about 8.3 km and rises to 125 m of Globigerina limestone, with the Coral Lagoon sinkhole on its north side.

Underwater, Ċirkewwa is one of the most dived sites in the Maltese islands, with cliffs, caves, tunnels and an arch down to the seabed at 27 m, plus two deliberate wrecks: the tug MV Rozi and the patrol boat P29.

Climate

The region has a dry Mediterranean climate with a long rainless summer and a short, sharp wet season. Using Open-Meteo’s ERA5 reanalysis for 1991 to 2020 at a reference point in Mosta, August is the hottest month with average daily highs of 28.1 °C and lows of 24.1 °C, while January averages 14.6 °C by day and 12.0 °C at night.

Rainfall totals about 390 mm a year and is heavily concentrated: July averages 0.4 mm against 71.7 mm in December and 67.5 mm in November, with September to February accounting for roughly 84 per cent of the annual total.

Month	Avg high	Avg low	Rain
January	14.6 °C	12.0 °C	55 mm
April	17.3 °C	14.1 °C	15 mm
July	27.2 °C	23.0 °C	0.4 mm
October	23.2 °C	20.1 °C	50 mm

Those are gridded reanalysis figures, which smooth out the extremes: on the ground the north coast reports summer peaks well above 30 °C and occasional days near 40 °C. Sea temperature lags the air by about two months. Open-Meteo’s marine data off the north coast puts daily means around 16 °C in February and March, close to 28 °C in August and still about 25 °C in October, which is why late autumn swimming is better here than the air temperature suggests.

The dominant wind is the majjistral, the northwesterly that gives the coastal park its name and that pushes swell into Golden Bay and Għajn Tuffieħa.

When to go

April to early June and late September into October are the best windows: the sea is warm enough to swim, the beaches are not full, and the inland walking is comfortable. Buskett and Foresta 2000 are at their best in spring, when the wildflowers and orchids are out.

July and August are hot, dry and crowded, when the north coast doubles in population and the beaches are at their fullest. It is also feast season: Mosta celebrates the Assumption on 15 August, a public holiday, Lija sets off its fireworks in the first week of August, Naxxar keeps 8 September and Qawra marks St Francis on 17 September.

Two seasonal quirks are worth planning around. Lifeguards and Malta Tourism Authority staff are on Mellieħa Bay every day from June to September and not outside that window. The Għadira Nature Reserve runs the opposite calendar, opening from September to May and closing over the summer, so a beach holiday and a visit to the reserve behind the beach are almost mutually exclusive.

November to February is the wet, windy half of the year, and the Imnarja feast at Buskett on 29 June is the single dated event most worth building a trip around.

Getting there

From the airport

The TD1 Airport Direct route runs from Malta International Airport through Rabat, Mellieħa and Buġibba to Ċirkewwa, covering most of the region in one bus for €3.50. Route 214 also links Buġibba with the airport via Mosta and Rabat.

From Valletta

Five routes reach Rabat and Mdina from the Valletta terminal: 50, 51, 52, 53 and 56. For the north, route 42 runs to Ċirkewwa via Mosta and Mellieħa, route 49 goes to Għadira Bay via Naxxar, and X300 is the faster run to Ċirkewwa. Routes 31, 45 and 48 serve Buġibba and St Paul’s Bay, and route 44 reaches Golden Bay.

From Gozo

Ċirkewwa is the ferry corner: a terminal at the island’s northernmost point with a hotel, a car park and almost nothing else, plus the sandy Paradise Bay just to the south. Gozo Channel runs to Mġarr in Gozo daily, with a crossing of about 25 minutes.

A ferry terminal and breakwater were inaugurated at Buġibba in July 2025 for a planned fast ferry linking Sliema, Buġibba and Mġarr, but we could not confirm from an operator source that it is currently running, so check before relying on it.

Getting around

Buses cover the region adequately and cheaply. A single journey on a day route costs €2.00 in winter and €2.50 in summer, valid for two hours with free transfers and payable in cash or by contactless card on boarding. Night routes and special services are €3.00, the TD1 airport route is €3.50, and travelling without a valid ticket carries a €50 fine.

If you are here for more than two or three days, buy a card. The Explore Adult 7-day card is €25 for unlimited travel on day and night routes, the Explore Child version for ages 4 to 10 is €7, and under-fours travel free. The shareable 12 Single Day Journeys card is €19, and Explore Flex passes run €21 for four days and €27 for seven. Cards are sold at the airport, the Valletta and Buġibba terminals and Sliema Ferries.

The routes that matter

Route 101 is the beach bus, from Ċirkewwa to Mġarr via Mellieħa, Manikata, Popeye Village, Golden Bay and Għadira Bay. Routes 221 and 222 connect Mellieħa with Buġibba and St Paul’s Bay, and 222 continues to Sliema; 223 links Buġibba with Golden Bay. Route 186 is the cross-region link from Buġibba to Rabat and Mdina via Mosta and Attard. For Dingli, take 52 or 56 from Valletta.

Driving is on the left. A car makes the cliffs, Buskett, Marfa Ridge and the Victoria Lines far easier to reach, but Mdina is closed to traffic. Golden Bay has both a bus terminus and a car park, which is why it fills first. Għajn Tuffieħa, 345 m along the coast, is reached down about 200 steps, which keeps the crowds down and rules it out if you have mobility problems or a lot of beach gear.

Practical info

Opening hours and tickets

Heritage Malta runs St Paul’s Catacombs, the Domvs Romana and Ta’ Bistra. All its sites close on 1 January, Good Friday and on 24, 25 and 31 December, and last admission everywhere is 30 minutes before closing. Seasonal hours change, so confirm times on heritagemalta.mt rather than trusting a third-party listing. St Paul’s Catacombs is on 2145 4562 and the Domvs Romana on 2145 4125.

The Mdina cathedral ticket is bought at the Cathedral Museum beside the church, not at the church door, and both are shut on Sundays and public holidays, which catches out anyone planning a Sunday in Mdina.

Beaches and reserves

Mellieħa Bay is the largest sandy beach in Malta, over a kilometre long, with shallow water for the first 10 to 15 m and sections set aside for windsurfing, diving and kayaking. Golden Bay has summer lifeguards and a gentle slope into the water. Entry to the Għadira reserve is free, but it is a no-smoking area, pets are barred and it closes all summer.

What we could not verify

The Majjistral Nature and History Park’s own website was unreachable when we checked it in September 2026, so opening arrangements, guided walks and parking come from secondary sources only. We also could not obtain current seasonal opening hours for the Heritage Malta sites in Rabat and Mosta, only their admission prices and closure dates.

Both Maltese and English are official and English is spoken everywhere here, but road signs use Maltese: Ir-Rabat, Il-Mosta, Il-Mellieħa, San Pawl il-Baħar and Iċ-Ċirkewwa are the ones you will read from a bus window.