Sliema and St Julian's

Overview

Sliema and St Julian’s are two adjoining coastal towns on the north east side of Malta, separate on the map but one continuous strip on the ground: a promenade running from Tigné Point, across Marsamxett Harbour from Valletta, round the headland to Spinola Bay and Paceville. Nobody walking it can tell where one town ends and the other begins. This is where most of Malta’s modern hotel stock, most of its chain shopping and effectively all of its late nightlife have collected, and where a large share of visitors sleep even when what they came to see is elsewhere on the island.

Neither town is old in the way the rest of Malta is old. Sliema was a fishing settlement across the water from the capital until its population began to grow after 1853, then a summer resort for wealthier Valletta families whose Victorian villas lined a three-kilometre sea promenade. St Julian’s grew around Spinola Palace, built in 1688, and stayed a fishing and farming coast until the twentieth century. Almost all of that has been rebuilt. What replaced it is apartment blocks, hotels and, since 2020, the tallest buildings in the country.

At the 2021 census Sliema had 19,655 residents on 1.30 square kilometres and San Ġiljan 11,653 on 1.61, a combined 31,308 people. Sliema’s 15,167 residents per square kilometre was the highest density of any locality in Malta. In both towns roughly half the residents were non-Maltese: 9,605 of Sliema’s total and 5,754 of San Ġiljan’s. That is the honest character of the place: a dense, international, half-transient coastal suburb with a very good seafront walk, fine views of Valletta, a great deal of construction and no sand to speak of.

Neighbourhoods

The strip is one walk but six stretches, and knowing which is which decides how well you sleep.

Tigné Point

The blunt peninsula at the Sliema end, closest to Valletta. British barracks stood here until they were demolished in 2001, and the point was rebuilt in the early 2000s as apartments, offices, a piazza of shops and a shopping mall on a car-free deck, with the Valletta bastions directly opposite. The developer describes The Point as Malta’s largest shopping complex and Pjazza Tigné as the open square at the heart of it. Quiet at night, no sea access worth the name, best views in the two towns.

The Strand and the Ferries

Ix-Xatt, the inner waterfront facing Manoel Island and Gżira, is where the Valletta ferry berths and where Sliema’s shopping concentrates, together with Tower Road and Bisazza Street. It is also the busiest road in the two towns, with buses and coaches queuing along the water. Convenient rather than pleasant.

Tower Road and Għar id-Dud

The open sea side of the peninsula, past Fort Tigné, and the classic stretch of promenade: wide pavement, rock shelves below, apartment blocks above, joggers early and families late. Fond Għadir and the Exiles sit along here, and the coast from Qui-si-Sana to St Julian’s is one long rocky shore rather than a beach.

Balluta

The hinge between the two towns and the best square on the strip: a triangular plaza on the water shaded by Judas trees, with the neo-Gothic Carmelite parish church on one side and the Art Nouveau Balluta Buildings on the other. Cafés rather than clubs. If you want one address for the whole strip, this is it.

Spinola

The small working bay of St Julian’s, with fishing boats still moored in it and Spinola Palace above, built in 1688 and enlarged in the 1730s. The waterfront is a solid rank of restaurant terraces. Loud in the evening in the ordinary way, not in the Paceville way.

Paceville and the Pembroke edge

Paceville sits on the headland between Spinola Point and Dragonara Point, and is Malta’s nightlife district: nightclubs, bars, strip clubs and restaurants packed into a few streets. Beyond it the strip runs out into Pembroke, a British military base from the 1850s to 1979 that only became a separate town in 1993 and still has more open ground than anywhere else along here.

See & do

The single best thing to do here is walk the promenade, from Tigné Point to Spinola Bay, in the last two hours of daylight. It is continuous, flat, paved, and about three kilometres along the Sliema front alone. Take it in that direction for the light: Valletta sits across Marsamxett Harbour to the south, and its bastions turn gold in the late afternoon with the sun behind you.

The Valletta view and the crossing

The view of the capital from the Sliema waterfront is why many people book here rather than in Valletta itself, and the ferry turns that view into an errand. Boats run between the Strand and Valletta every fifteen minutes from 06:45, until 19:30 in winter and 01:30 in summer, with a later 08:45 start on Sundays and public holidays.

Fortifications you can and cannot enter

Fort Tigné, built by the Order of St John between 1793 and 1795 to guard the mouth of Marsamxett Harbour, is one of the oldest polygonal forts in the world and was restored in 2008, but it is not open to the public: you can only walk the landscaped glacis around it. Two other fortifications on the walk were converted rather than opened: Sliema Point Battery, built by the British between 1872 and 1876 and known as Il-Fortizza, and St Julian’s Tower, completed in 1658 as the fifth of the De Redin towers, are both restaurants today.

Swimming, honestly

There is no beach here in the sense most people mean: the coast from Qui-si-Sana round to St Julian’s is a rock platform. In practice you lay a towel on flat, hot, uneven limestone, get into deep clear water down a metal ladder set into the rock, and get out the same way. Some stretches have lido decks and sunbed concessions; most do not. Bring something to sit on and shoes you can walk on rock in: the shelf is sharp in places and slippery near the waterline. Swell from the north east makes the exposed side unpleasant, and on those days people move to the sheltered pockets at Balluta or St George’s Bay, the small sandy inlet at the Paceville end, which is correspondingly crowded. Balluta Bay was closed to swimming from May to August 2024 after sewage contamination before being declared safe again, a fair reminder to check current signage.

The high-rise question

You will notice the cranes. Most of Malta’s tallest buildings stand in this corridor and the creek towns beside it. The Portomaso Business Tower opened in 2001 at 97.5 metres and was the country’s tallest for two decades; the Zaha Hadid-designed Mercury Tower, 122 metres over 32 floors, overtook it in 2020 and was completed in 2023. The argument continues. At Villa Rosa above St George’s Bay, a scheme for towers of 35 and 27 floors went to environmental assessment in 2023, with the study warning of visual impact and of shadow falling on the public beach; in October 2024 the government ordered a consultation on height rules that would let it proceed.

Food & drink

Eating here is a matter of picking your stretch. Spinola Bay has the densest run of restaurant terraces, wrapped round a bay that still has fishing boats in it, and is the default for a sit-down dinner with a view. Balluta square is the calmer version, with cafés under the trees facing the water. Tigné Point’s piazza is the newest and the most retail in feel. The Strand and Tower Road carry a long, undifferentiated ribbon of places aimed at whoever is walking past.

This is not where you come for the most Maltese food on the island: the seafront trade is international, and the fishermen’s lunch you may be picturing is easier to find at Marsaxlokk or inland. What this coast does well is choice, late kitchens and outdoor tables. Prices on the water are noticeably higher than one street back, for the view rather than the cooking.

For a cheap standing lunch, look for a pastizzerija rather than a restaurant: pastizzi, the flaky pastry parcels filled with ricotta or mushy peas, are sold by the piece for small change. Ftira, the flat Maltese loaf, turns up as a filled sandwich in the same shops.

Nightlife

Paceville is Malta’s nightlife district, and it is worth being straightforward about what that means. It occupies a few streets on the headland between Spinola Point and Dragonara Point, packed with nightclubs, bars, strip clubs and restaurants, and is known locally as Malta’s sin city. The crowd is younger than most visitors expect: Maltese teenagers start going at thirteen or fourteen, the legal drinking age is seventeen, and in high summer the streets fill with foreign teenagers on language-school and party trips.

The format is dense and mobile: venues sit door to door, most drinking happens standing, and people circulate rather than settling in one place. Some run through until dawn. Fights are frequent enough to be reported as an ordinary feature of the district, and a glass banister collapse at one club in November 2015 injured seventy-one people, triggering a long argument about safety and about how young the crowd is.

None of that makes it a no-go area. It makes it a specific offer, aimed at a specific age, that many visitors will want to avoid. If you go, go late, keep your bag in front of you and treat the small hours as you would in any crowded club district.

The alternative on the same strip

Spinola Bay and Balluta are the other half of the evening and a different world: restaurant terraces, wine by the glass, people sitting down. Sliema’s seafront stays busy well into the night in summer simply with people walking. And in summer the last ferry back from Valletta leaves at 01:30, which makes a night in the capital’s bars a genuine option from a Sliema base.

When to go

Late April to mid June and mid September to late October are the best windows: warm enough to swim, short of the July and August crush, and outside the wet season.

The numbers

Monthly normals for this coast give daily maxima of 14.7°C in January, 17.4°C in April, 27.3°C in July and 28.2°C in August, easing to 26.0°C in September and 23.2°C in October. Rain falls in the cool half of the year: 70.4 mm in December, 66.7 mm in November and 53.9 mm in January, against 0.5 mm in July. Those autumn totals arrive as a few heavy days rather than steady drizzle, which matters here because the promenade has no shelter.

Sea temperature runs behind the air. Malta’s water averages 20°C over the year, sits at 15 to 16°C from January to April, reaches about 18°C in May, peaks around 26 to 27°C in mid August and cools through autumn from 25°C to 20°C. October swimming off the Sliema rocks is genuinely pleasant; May swimming is bracing.

Crowds and calendar

July and August are the peak in every sense: hottest, driest, most crowded, most expensive, and the months when Paceville fills with teenage visitors. They are also when the summer festas fall. Sliema’s Stella Maris feast is held on the first Sunday after 18 August, and St Julian’s celebrates its patron on the last Sunday of August with the ġostra, a competition to run along a greased pole suspended over the sea and grab a flag from the end. The Strand is a favoured spot for watching the August fireworks.

Winter is mild, wet and quiet, the ferry finishes at 19:30 and much of the seasonal seafront trade closes. It is a reasonable time to use this coast as a base for the rest of Malta, less so as a destination in itself.

Getting there

From Malta International Airport, route TD3 serves both Sliema and St Julian’s and route T2 runs from St Julian’s. Tallinja Direct fares are higher than ordinary bus fares, at €3.00 a single or €3.50 on TD1.

From Valletta there are two ways in. Buses 13, 13A, 14, 16, 21 and TD13 run from the Valletta terminal to Sliema or St Julian’s. Better, take the ferry: it runs direct between Valletta and Sliema every fifteen minutes, and holders of a personalised tallinja card travel free. Paying cash, an adult day single is €3.00 and a return €5.00, with children at €1.00 and €1.50; from 19:30 the night tariff applies at €3.50 single and €5.20 return.

From the north of the island, route 222 comes down from Mellieħa.

Getting around

Walk. The strip from Tigné Point to Paceville is a continuous paved seafront, and covering it end to end on foot takes well under an hour, faster than the same journey by road at most times of day.

For everything else, buses. A single on day routes costs €2.00 in winter and €2.50 in summer and is valid for two hours with free transfers; night routes are €3.00. If you are moving around daily, the seven-day Explore card at €25.00 gives unlimited travel on day and night routes; a 4-day Explore Flex pass is €21.00, a 7-day Flex €27.00, and a shareable book of 12 single day journeys €19.00. Children aged four to ten pay €7.00 for a seven-day card and under-fours travel free.

The ferry is the fastest link to the capital, and from Valletta a second ferry crosses to Cospicua for the Three Cities. Route 133 connects the Valletta ferry quays with the centre of town, and a free shuttle runs between the Marsamxett and Lascaris quays timed to the boats.

Traffic on the Strand and through St Julian’s is heavy for most of the day, so allow more time than the map suggests for any bus journey starting here. The promenade itself is flat and continuous, which makes it good for pushchairs and wheelchairs by Maltese standards, though the rock shelves below it are not.

Where to stay

This strip is Malta’s main hotel concentration, and the case for staying here is transport rather than atmosphere: a short ferry ride from Valletta, most of the bus network’s trunk routes, and the widest choice of rooms at every price. Malta had 368 active collective accommodation establishments with 56,329 bed places in June 2026, and net occupancy ran at 71.3 per cent that quarter, so summer availability is tight.

Where you sit within the strip matters more than the star rating. Tigné Point and the Sliema seafront give you the Valletta views, the ferry and a quiet night. Balluta gives you the best square and a walk to everything. Spinola gives you the restaurants. Paceville and St George’s Bay give you the resort hotels and the noise; the Portomaso and Dragonara complexes sit on that edge.

Two warnings apply everywhere here. Construction is constant and unpredictable, and a room sold on a sea view in February can face scaffolding in June, so ask about works next door rather than only about the view. Apartment rentals are abundant because so much of the stock is modern blocks, but the density that makes them cheap makes them noisy. If you want quiet and old stone, sleep in Valletta or the Three Cities and come here for the evening.

Practical info

Maltese and English are both official languages and English is used everywhere along this strip; Sliema in particular has an unusually high proportion of first-language English speakers by Maltese standards. The currency is the euro. Driving is on the left.

The emergency number is 112, which reaches ambulance, fire and police and works from mobiles across the European Union including Malta. Tap water is disinfected as a legal requirement and safe to drink, though many residents and visitors prefer bottled for taste.

A few things specific to here. Shade is scarce on the promenade and on the rock shelves, so the middle of a July day is not the time to walk the strip. Bathing water is monitored and closures do happen, so read the boards at the entry ladders rather than assuming. Construction noise is a daily fact of life in both towns, and drilling can start early on weekday mornings.

For the wider context, see Valletta and the Grand Harbour.