Ramla Bay

Overview

Ramla Bay, Ir-Ramla l-Ħamra in Maltese, is the main sandy beach on the island of Gozo: a wide arc of red-brown sand at the foot of a farmed valley on the north coast, between the bays of Marsalforn and San Blas. Gozo has only a handful of sandy beaches and this is the one everybody means when they say beach here. It sits below Ġgantija and the village of Xagħra on one side and Nadur on the other.

The Maltese name translates as the red sands and is descriptive rather than poetic. The colour is a genuine orange-red rather than the usual Mediterranean buff, and Ramla is the textbook example of iron-rich orange sand. It reads strongest wet, at the waterline and after rain.

What the setting is actually like

There is no hotel wall. Visit Gozo, the island’s tourism site, describes the bay as undeveloped, with a few cafes and a small stall set back from the sand and the terraced fields of the valley behind them. The same page gives the bay’s protected status: a Natura 2000 site, with a dune system behind the sand that is a rare habitat in Malta.

Two caves look down from the cliffs: Calypso’s Cave on the western side above Xagħra and Mixta Cave on the eastern side above Nadur, and the two are constantly confused.

History

Almost everything historic at Ramla is out of sight. Roman remains lie beneath the sand, along with features from the Knights’ time. The Roman site behind the western end of the beach is mapped as Villa Rumana tar-Ramla l-Ħamra. There is no excavation to walk around and no interpretation on site.

The Knights fortified the whole bay

Ramla is one of the few places on Gozo where a fleet could put men ashore, so the Order of Saint John closed it off. In 1715 and 1716 they built three works here: Ramla Left Battery, also called Belancourt Battery, on the Xagħra side; Ramla Right Battery, also called Gironda Battery, on the Nadur side; and Ramla Redoubt in the centre. An entrenchment wall linked all three, Marsalforn Tower watched the approach from the plateau above, and an underwater barrier was laid across the bay to stop ships from landing.

Both batteries fired on the approaching French fleet during the invasion of Malta in 1798. The left battery and the redoubt are now ruins and only part of the right battery’s blockhouse survives. One of the left battery’s iron cannon is now at the Cittadella in Victoria.

Calypso and the developers

The cave on the western cliff is claimed as the one in the Odyssey where the nymph Calypso held Odysseus for seven years, which would make Gozo the poem’s Ogygia. The identification is contested and other Mediterranean islands claim it too, among them Mljet in Croatia.

That Ramla still looks the way it does is the result of a long planning fight. In June 2007 the planning authority approved 23 villas next to Calypso’s Cave over the objections of the Superintendent of Cultural Heritage and Malta’s main environmental organisations, and without requiring an environmental impact assessment. Above the bay stands the Ulysses Lodge, an abandoned hotel of the 1980s; the plan to replace it with villas across roughly 40,000 square metres of clay slope was fought through appeals by a local campaign and dropped.

Visiting

Ramla is a public beach: no gate, no ticket, no closing time and nothing to book.

Getting there

Bus route 302 runs hourly from Victoria terminus Bay 2, at five past the hour from 06:05 to 22:05, out through Xewkija and over Nadur, reaching Ramla about 28 minutes later. It returns at 33 minutes past, last bus 22:33. Note that it takes the Nadur road rather than passing Ġgantija. Route 322 also calls here between the Mġarr ferry and Marsalforn, roughly every 45 minutes midday.

A single journey bought on the bus costs 2.00 euro in winter and 2.50 euro in summer and is valid for two hours including transfers; a seven day Explore card for unlimited travel across both islands is 27.00 euro. By car the descent is from Xagħra or Nadur, both narrow valley roads, ending at the two car parks behind the sand.

Swimming

The bay shelves gently and the swimming is usually easy, but it faces open sea to the north and is not always benign. Lifeguards on Gozo and Comino come from the Emergency Response and Rescue Corps; Ramla has two towers with four lifeguards between them in season. Read their flags: green means no danger, yellow a current or waves, red a strong current or rough sea, two red flags no swimming at all, and purple that jellyfish are about. A pair of red and yellow flags in the sand marks the supervised strip, which they shift as conditions change.

Since 1 January 2026 smoking is prohibited except inside marked zones signed at the entrances, with a 150 euro fine and no warnings. Ramla and Golden Bay in Malta are the two beaches in the pilot scheme.

The caves above

Calypso’s Cave is the weak part of the visit. The rock began to crumble and the cave was shut on safety grounds; in 2019 the Ministry for Gozo commissioned the NGO Wirt Għawdex to study what restoration would be needed, with the stated aim of reopening it. Sources disagree on whether it has since reopened, so treat access as uncertain and go for the belvedere beside it rather than the hole in the rock. Mixta Cave on the Nadur side has stayed open, gives the same view over the red bay and is reached on foot along a country road.

Tips

Stay off the dunes. The habitat behind the sand is rare in Malta and the Environment and Resources Authority has posted signage asking visitors not to trample it.

Turtles

Ramla is Malta’s most productive loggerhead nesting beach and you may well find part of it roped off between June and September. In 2025 six nests were laid here and 319 hatchlings emerged over the summer, guarded by ERA and Nature Trust Malta with volunteers on rotation; nests have been recorded every season since at least 2021. Keep out of the enclosures, keep lights and torches off the sand after dark in nesting season, and report an unmarked nest rather than photographing it.

Practical notes

Bring what you need. A couple of cafes and a stall set back from the sand are the extent of it, so carry water and cash, and bring your own shade: the beach has none.

Go early or go outside July and August. Xagħra alone sends thousands of visitors down here in summer, and the valley road and car parks are the bottleneck. The off season is a fair alternative: the caves and ruined batteries are the same in March as in August, and the bus still runs hourly.

Do not drive onto the beach. It is prosecuted: in March 2023 a man was arraigned after being caught driving a vehicle on the sand at Ramla l-Ħamra.

Ġgantija and Xagħra sit directly over the western side of the bay, so Ramla works as the afternoon half of a day that starts with the temples. Both are covered in the Gozo and Comino guide, and the ferry crossings and bus passes that get you to the island are in the Malta guide.