Dwejra

Overview

Dwejra is a stretch of coast on the west side of Gozo, in the limits of the village of San Lawrenz, and it is the place where the Azure Window used to be. The arch is gone. It collapsed at about 09:40 local time on 8 March 2017 after heavy storms and left nothing visible above the water. If your picture of Gozo has a 28 metre limestone arch standing in the sea, that picture is nine years out of date, and any listing still selling it to you is wrong.

The honest question is whether Dwejra is worth the trip without its headline act. It is, because the arch was never the only thing here. Within a few hundred metres of one car park you get the Inland Sea, a seawater lagoon joined to the open Mediterranean by a tunnel that fishing boats still run through; Fungus Rock, a 60 metre lump of limestone the Knights of St John guarded under threat of the galleys; Dwejra Bay behind it; the Blue Hole, one of the best known dives in the Mediterranean; a 1652 watchtower; and a chapel.

The geology is why all of that sits in one place. Malta put the area on its UNESCO tentative list in 1998 as Qawra/Dwejra, describing the Inland Sea and Dwejra Bay as large circular subsidence structures: caverns that dissolved out of the limestone on dry land and then collapsed. The submission notes the full sequence of marine erosion features here, from sea caves through tunnels and arches to stacks and reefs. An arch falling down is that sequence working normally. Dwejra is about 16 minutes by bus from Victoria, on the far west coast of Gozo and Comino.

History

The arch was young. Erosion cuts a notch in a cliff, the stresses open a vertical joint, the joint widens into a cave and then an arch, and the cycle ends when the roof outweighs the pillars. The process here took roughly 500 years. Seventeenth and eighteenth century descriptions of Dwejra, already known then because of Fungus Rock, do not mention an arch, so it probably did not exist. What those writers called it-Tieqa Żerqa, the azure window, was the cave entrance to the Inland Sea, and the arch most likely inherited the name; its earliest record is the background of an 1824 illustration of Dwejra Tower.

The long warning

Pieces had been falling off for decades: parts of the top slab between the 1980s and the 2000s, a large slab on the outer edge in April 2012, another in March 2013. A geological report that year concluded the arch was relatively stable with no imminent risk of collapse, while warning that falls would continue and that going close was hazardous. In December 2016 an emergency order banned walking on the arch, with a 1,500 euro fine. It was not enforced, and visitors were still crossing days before it fell. When it went, the pillar gave way first and took the top with it.

The rock, the root and the tower

The older story here is about a plant. Cynomorium coccineum, a parasite that is not a fungus despite every name it has been given, grows on top of Fungus Rock, still the only place in the Maltese islands where it is found. The Knights believed it staunched wounds and cured dysentery, sent samples to European royalty, and called the islet Il-Ġebla tal-Ġeneral, the General’s Rock, after the general’s root on top of it. Grand Master Pinto put the rock out of bounds in 1746, posted a guard, had the sides smoothed to remove handholds and rigged a basket on ropes from the mainland as the only access. Trespassers faced three years at the oars of the galleys.

Dwejra Tower, completed in 1652 under Grand Master Lascaris, was funded by the Università of Gozo, its running costs met by salt from the nearby pans. It watched for corsair landings, signalled other posts by fire at night and smoke by day, and doubled as the lookout that stopped anyone climbing Fungus Rock. The British used it as an observation post in both World Wars. It was a ruin with a collapsed seaward wall when Din l-Art Ħelwa took it on loan in 1996 and restored it. The charity was granted guardianship in 2003 and restored the tower again in 2022 with European funds, adding panels in Maltese and English.

The chapel is much younger. St Anne’s Chapel, Kappella ta’ Sant’Anna, went up in a few months on the site of an older one, funded by a Salesian friar, Alwiġ Mizzi, and inaugurated on 25 July 1963.

Visiting

Everything starts at Pjazza tad-Dwejra, where the road, the bus and the car park all end. The Inland Sea is about 200 metres north on foot, the site of the former arch about the same distance west, and a kiosk, a dive centre and public toilets are mapped on the square. There is no gate, no ticket and no closing time.

The Inland Sea and the tunnel

Il-Qawra, the Inland Sea, is a lagoon about 119 metres long and 81 wide, roughly 2 metres deep over its pebbly bed, with a quayside on one side and a stony beach and fishermen’s huts on the other. It is not the Qawra near St Paul’s Bay, which shares the Maltese word.

The reason to be here is the tunnel. A narrow natural arch cuts through the cliff to the open sea, and on calm days the traditional Gozitan boats, luzzijiet, run visitors through it and on to Fungus Rock and the site of the lost arch. Visit Gozo puts the tunnel at about 100 metres, its own dive description at roughly 80. Either way the walls overhang most of the way, and the moment the boat comes out into deep water at the far end is the best thing at Dwejra now.

Underwater, where the arch went

Dwejra’s diving was famous before 2017 and the collapse added to it. The Blue Hole is a vertical chimney in the rock beside the former arch, entered from the shore: a shallow shelf leads to an abrupt drop, and the dive runs through an archway from 6 metres down to about 15, with a large cave opposite. The Inland Sea tunnel is an advanced dive too, and Fungus Rock a third, averaging 30 metres, with vertical walls and caverns formed by leaning boulders. The rubble of the window is down there too: footage surfaced within days, the features it formed were quickly called a divers’ paradise, and Visit Gozo now lists the collapsed arch as a dive site.

The tower, the bay and the chapel

Dwejra Tower stands about 350 metres south of the square, above Dwejra Bay. Din l-Art Ħelwa opens it Monday to Friday, 09:00 to 14:00, and lists no admission charge; the local rule of thumb is that it is open when the flag is flying. Beyond it, Dwejra Bay is another collapsed sinkhole, deep enough to swim in and often used as an anchorage. Look for the small cave that sheltered the watchman on Fungus Rock duty, and the rock-cut steps down to the old slipway.

Fungus Rock is a nature reserve and you cannot land on it: it is the only known locality of the Maltese wall lizard subspecies Podarcis filfolensis generalensis, so access stayed restricted long after the Knights lost interest in the plant. St Anne’s Chapel, the closest building to where the arch stood, holds one Mass a week in Maltese, on Sunday at 17:00 in summer and 16:00 in winter.

Tips

Bus 311 runs Victoria to Dwejra and back seven days a week, and it is the only route that comes here. Buses leave Victoria Bay stop 2515 at 07:20, hourly to 11:20, every 45 minutes from 12:05 to 18:05, then hourly to 22:05, and the run takes about 16 minutes. Return departures from Dwejra start at 07:38 and follow the same pattern to 22:23. A single on a day route costs 2.50 euro in summer and 2.00 in winter, valid two hours with free transfers, payable in cash or by contactless card on board. Check the operator’s service updates first: the route is short enough that one detour takes out the whole service. If you drive, Malta drives on the left, and the car park is the end of the road.

What the ground is actually like

There is no shade at Dwejra. Nothing grows tall here, and the walk out to the Blue Hole and the former arch site crosses bare coralline limestone with rough surfaces and sharp edges, which chews up thin soles and turns an ankle if you watch the sea instead of your feet. Closed shoes with grip, water and a hat, not sandals. Visit Gozo’s own advice is blunt: care is needed in rough conditions and going close to the edge of the shore is not advised. That is the same coast that dropped a 28 metre arch into the sea.

Diving works nearly all year because the sea never drops below 14°C, and if the wind is wrong here you are minutes from a sheltered alternative. ### Two honest warnings

The first is obvious: do not travel to Dwejra to see the Azure Window, and do not book a tour that implies you will. The second is that Dwejra is not a managed site. Din l-Art Ħelwa, which holds guardianship of the tower, says the area is still awaiting formal management and that its overtourism and shanty boathouses need direction and law enforcement. There are no wardens and no barriers worth the name. The area sits inside the Natura 2000 network and a marine protected area, so stay on the worn paths and take your rubbish out.

Half a day covers Dwejra properly, boat trip and tower included, which leaves the afternoon for Victoria. If you want an intact arch, there is a second natural window at Wied il-Mielaħ, 3.7 kilometres northeast along the same coast, less known and still standing. For reaching the island at all, see the Malta country guide.