Fort St Elmo

Overview

Fort St Elmo (Forti Sant’Iermu) is a star fort at the seaward tip of the Sciberras peninsula in Valletta, holding the ground between the Grand Harbour and Marsamxett Harbour and commanding the entrance to both. It is best known for its month of resistance in the Great Siege of 1565, and since 1975 it has also housed the National War Museum (Mużew Nazzjonali tal-Gwerra). Heritage Malta runs fort and museum together on one ticket, and reckons on at least an hour and a half to see both properly.

The visit splits over two levels. At ground level you walk the fort itself: the Piazza d’Armi parade ground, the Abercrombie Casemates and bastion, two churches dedicated to St Anne, the gunpowder polverista and the Harbour Fire Command rooms on the cavalier. Most of the museum sits on the first floor. There is no fixed route, so visitors wander at will, with orientation maps at each junction.

The museum runs to seven sections covering 7,000 years of Maltese military history, from the Bronze Age to the country’s accession to the European Union. Armour of the Order of St John and of the Ottoman forces covers the earlier centuries, but the Second World War takes the largest share, and the best-known objects are the George Cross awarded to Malta in 1942, the fuselage of the Gloster Sea Gladiator N5520 known as Faith, and the Willys jeep called Husky used by Roosevelt and Eisenhower.

The fort is part of the fortifications of Valletta and falls inside the city’s UNESCO World Heritage listing of 1980. It closed to the military in 1972, sat half derelict for decades, and reopened to the public in 2015 after a long restoration.

History

There was a militia watch post on the point by 1417, and in 1488 the Aragonese built a watchtower there, dedicated to Erasmus of Formia, better known as St Elmo. The Order of St John reinforced it in 1533. After an Ottoman raid in 1551 sailed into Marsamxett Harbour unopposed, Grand Master de Homedes ordered something heavier: the tower came down and in 1552 a star fort went up in its place, built by the engineer Pietro Prato under Fra Leone Strozzi. By 1565 it had gained a cavalier, a covertway, a tenaille and a ravelin thrown up in a few months.

The Great Siege of 1565

The Ottoman assault opened on 25 May 1565, and the attackers expected the small fort to fall quickly. It did not. Guns dug in on Mount Sciberras above the fort and on the far arm of Marsamxett Harbour bombarded it for four weeks while the garrison, roughly 150 knights, 600 soldiers and 60 armed galley slaves, was resupplied at night by boat from Birgu and Senglea across the Grand Harbour. During the bombardment a cannon misfired into its own parapet, and flying debris mortally wounded Dragut, one of the ablest Ottoman commanders.

Fort St Elmo fell on 23 June 1565, the eve of the feast of St John the Baptist, patron of the Order defending it. None of the knights inside survived. Nine Maltese defenders got out by swimming across the Grand Harbour to Fort St Angelo. The month the fort held bought time to prepare the two fortresses across the water and for reinforcements to reach the island.

Rebuilt into a city

Jean Parisot de Valette responded to the siege by building a new fortified capital on the peninsula from 1566, and Francesco Laparelli’s design absorbed the ruined fort into the city walls. Very little of the pre-1565 structure survives, which is why the fragments uncovered during the recent restoration mattered to archaeologists. The Vendôme Bastion followed in 1614, the Carafa Enceinte from 1687 wrapped the fort in a new outer line, and the eighteenth century added barracks, stores, a church and a lighthouse. The buildings between the two make up Lower St Elmo, still largely derelict and closed.

The British rebuilt the fort around artillery: a musketry parapet early in the nineteenth century, the old powder magazine converted into an armoury in 1855, work on Abercrombie’s Bastion in the 1870s, twin 6-pounder emplacements between the wars, and in 1938 the Harbour Fire Command on top of the cavalier.

Malta’s Second World War began here. The first aerial bombardment of the islands hit the fort on 11 June 1940, killing six people; among the survivors was the military doctor Ċensu Tabone, later President of Malta. On 26 July 1941 its coastal artillery broke up an Italian seaborne raid on the Grand Harbour, and one of the attacking boats brought down the St Elmo Bridge to the breakwater, not replaced until 2012. The Royal Malta Artillery marched out on 26 March 1972.

The National War Museum started in 1975 as a volunteers’ display in Lower St Elmo called “The Gladiator ‘Faith’ and War Relics Exhibition”, and marked fifty years in 2025. By 2008 the fort was on the World Monuments Fund watch list of endangered sites; restoration ran from 2009 to 2015, and the museum reopened that May in the upper fort with a far bigger collection.

Visiting

The entrance is at street level on Triq il-Mediterran, Mediterranean Street, at the far end of Valletta from the City Gate. Hours run daily 09:00 to 19:00 from 1 March to 31 October and daily 09:00 to 17:00 from 1 November to the end of February, with last admission 30 minutes before closing. The site closes on 1 January, Good Friday and on 24, 25 and 31 December. Admission is 10 euro for adults, 7.50 euro for over-60s, youths aged 12 to 17 and students, 5.50 euro for children aged 6 to 11, and free for infants under 6 and for Heritage Malta members and passport holders. One ticket covers both fort and museum and stays valid for 30 days from purchase.

The seven museum sections run in order, though the fort around them does not. Five sit on the first floor, reached by stairs with handrails or by a lift on request; Section 6 is up steps only; Section 7, an audiovisual show, and the War Memorial are at ground level. Interpretation is in Maltese and English, with around 40 screens and audiovisuals on site, all subtitled in English.

The Second World War rooms

Two halls carry the weight of the museum. One holds the George Cross awarded to the people of Malta by King George VI in April 1942, one of only three collective awards of the decoration ever made, shown with a copy of the king’s handwritten citation; the original letter belongs to the National Library of Malta and comes here only on loan. The public award ceremony took place in Valletta on 13 September 1942.

The hall next to it explains Operation Pedestal, the convoy Malta calls Il-Konvoj ta’ Santa Marija. Fourteen merchant ships sailed in August 1942 with the island close to surrender; five reached the Grand Harbour, the last being the tanker Ohio, broken-backed and held up between two destroyers, on 15 August, the feast of Santa Marija. Her aviation fuel put Malta back in the war.

Up on the cavalier the Harbour Fire Command is now open: a Chart Room, a Telephone Room, a Fortress Observation Post, a Fire Command Post and an Officer Commanding Electric Lights Room, built in reinforced concrete in 1938 and in use until coastal defence was abolished in 1956. Between 1949 and 1951 Princess Elizabeth came up here to wave to her husband on the Royal Navy ships below. A 3D projection show at the foot of the cavalier tells its history.

In Guardia

The In Guardia re-enactment, a muster and inspection of the Order’s soldiers in period dress, is staged in the Piazza d’Armi on scheduled Sundays. Heritage Malta’s published 2026 dates are 18 and 25 October, 1 and 15 November, and 6 and 13 December. Gates open at 10:00 and the show starts at 11:00; on those days the fort and museum admit ordinary visitors only from 12:00. Tickets are 10 euro for adults for the show alone, or 17 euro with the fort and museum, and Heritage Malta passports and discount cards do not apply. Bad weather can cancel it.

Tips

If the Ħal Saflieni Hypogeum is on your list and the online calendar is full, Fort St Elmo is where you queue. Its reception sells the 50 euro last-minute tickets, on sale one day before the visit only; before noon it and the Gozo Museum of Archaeology are the only outlets, and from noon the National Museum of Archaeology, the Domvs Romana and the Hypogeum itself also sell them. Maximum four per buyer. Get there for opening.

Give it the full ninety minutes Heritage Malta suggests, and treat it as an outdoor visit as much as a museum one. Much of the ground level is open bastion and parade ground with no shade, which in July and August means hats, water and the seating dotted around the perimeter. There are four sets of toilets, free lockers and a free wheelchair service, and a second gift shop on the main piazza sells drinks and light snacks.

Getting there

Any bus terminating at Valletta will do: from the terminus it is about a 20 minute walk along Merchants Street, or take bus 133 to the Iermu stop. By ferry, land at the Customs House on the Grand Harbour side or Mattia Preti Square on the Marsamxett side and walk north along the road that rings the city. Hop-on hop-off coaches stop just outside. Drivers use public spaces near the fort, and there is a small parking area inside for disability card holders.

Accessibility is good for a sixteenth-century fort and honestly documented: reception, turnstiles, the first-floor museum sections and the toilets are wheelchair accessible, guide dogs are welcome anywhere visitors go, and braille orientation diagrams sit at each section’s entrance and exit. The first floor of Abercrombie Bastion, the Harbour Fire Command and Section 6 are reachable by stairs only.

The fort sits at the far end of Republic Street from the City Gate, so the sensible plan is to walk the length of the capital and finish here, or start here early and work back uphill through the rest of Malta’s Valletta sites.