Upper Barrakka Gardens
Free bastion terrace over the Grand Harbour
Visit details
Overview
The Upper Barrakka Gardens (Il-Barrakka ta’ Fuq) are a free public garden laid out on the upper tier of Saints Peter and Paul Bastion in Valletta, and the terrace along their harbour edge is the reason almost everyone comes. This is the highest point of the city walls, so the railing looks down the full length of the Grand Harbour: Fort St Angelo on its spit opposite, the Three Cities running back behind it, the shipyard beyond and the lower parts of the capital below.
The garden is small and takes ten minutes to walk. A row of open stone arches runs along one side, paths lead between busts, statues and plaques commemorating people and events in Maltese history, and the whole thing ends in a paved belvedere over the water. Nobody visits for the horticulture. The point is that the harbour makes sense from up here in a way it does not from sea level, which is why every Malta poster uses this angle.
Two things attached to the gardens matter as much as the view itself. Directly below the terrace sits the Saluting Battery, the lower artillery platform of the same bastion, which fires a ceremonial gun at 12:00 and again at 16:00, Monday to Saturday. At the other end, the Barrakka Lift runs 58 metres down the bastion wall into the Valletta ditch and out to Lascaris Wharf, which is how most people arriving by harbour ferry or cruise ship get up here in the first place.
Entry is free, there is no ticket desk and no booking, and the gardens are listed as open all seven days. That combination makes this the most crowded free space in Malta between mid morning and mid afternoon, and close to empty at either end of the day.
History
The bastion came first. Saints Peter and Paul Bastion was begun in 1566, the year Valletta was founded, and finished in 1570, built as a multi-tiered artillery platform whose guns could command the length and depth of the Grand Harbour. The lower tier became the Saluting Battery; the upper platform was given over to a loggia and a private garden in the early seventeenth century.
That garden belonged to the Italian langue of the Order of St John, whose auberges stood a short walk away, and it was theirs alone. The terraced arches you walk under were built in 1661 by the Italian knight Fra Flaminio Balbiani, the date the Malta Tourism Authority also gives for the garden’s origins.
The garden opened to the public under British rule. The loggia and garden above the Saluting Battery were opened as the Upper Barrakka Gardens in 1824, the date given both by the Malta Tourism Authority and by the history of the battery below.
Two later chapters are still visible on the ground. The first is the sculpture. Antonio Sciortino cast Les Gavroches, three street children in bronze, in Rome in 1904; the Society of Arts, Manufacturers and Commerce brought it to Malta and presented it to the government in 1907, when it was inaugurated here. In 2000 the original was restored and moved to the National Museum of Fine Arts, now MUŻA, and the piece in the garden today is a replica. Other memorials here commemorate Gerald Strickland, Sir Thomas Maitland and Sir Winston Churchill.
The second is the war. Both the gardens and the battery were badly damaged by aerial bombardment, and it was during the same war that the Lascaris War Rooms were dug in tunnels under the battery and the garden.
The lift has its own history of interruption. A first lift was built on this site in 1905, closed in 1973 and dismantled in 1983, leaving the bastion bare for nearly thirty years. The replacement, part financed by the European Regional Development Fund, was inaugurated on 15 December 2012, a week after the Three Cities ferry service it was meant to connect with.
Visiting
The gardens are on Triq Sant’ Orsla, next to Castille Place at the top of the city. From the main gate of Valletta the signed route runs along South Street to Castille Place and past the Auberge de Castille; the Saluting Battery below can be entered either from the gardens or from Battery Street alongside. All Valletta buses stop at the terminus outside the city gate, a five to ten minute walk away.
The garden is free and unstaffed, with public toilets on site. No official body publishes exact gate times: the Malta Tourism Authority lists it as open every day of the week without stating hours, and the times circulating on third party sites do not agree. In practice the gates open early and close late, but do not plan a sunrise or a midnight visit around it.
The gun
You can watch the firing from the garden railing for nothing, looking down onto the gun deck, and most people do. Standing on the battery itself, among the eight working replicas of 32 pounder muzzle loaders, costs 3 euro for adults and 1 euro for children aged 5 to 15, with free entry for members of Fondazzjoni Wirt Artna, the heritage trust that restored the battery in 2004 and runs it. The battery opens Monday to Saturday, 09:30 to 17:30, last admission 17:00, closed on New Year’s Eve, New Year’s Day, Good Friday, Easter, Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. It is a cashless venue: on site payment is by card only, and buying online in advance is cheaper. The operator recommends being in place about fifteen minutes before the 12:00 or 16:00 display.
The lift and what is under your feet
The Barrakka Lift has two cabins carrying 21 people each, drops 58 metres in roughly 23 to 25 seconds, and is much the fastest way between the Valletta Waterfront and the city. A return trip costs 1 euro. The Malta Tourism Authority lists operating hours of 07:00 to 21:00 from 1 November to 31 May and 07:00 to 24:00 from 1 June to 31 October, and notes that the lift ticket can be combined with the Grand Harbour ferry to the Three Cities.
In the ditch immediately below are the Lascaris War Rooms, the underground headquarters from which the defence of Malta was directed, open Monday to Saturday 09:30 to 17:30 with adult entry at 20 euro. A separate guided War H.Q. Tunnel Tour, 17 euro, sets off from the Saluting Battery at 10:00, 13:00 and 14:00.
Tips
Time your visit against the cruise clock rather than the gun. The terrace fills from mid morning and peaks in the fifteen minutes before each firing, the crush the operator warns about. Early morning and the hour before dark are the only times you get the railing to yourself.
The terrace faces roughly east and south east across the water, so the Three Cities are lit from behind in the morning and face on in the afternoon. If photographs of Birgu and Fort St Angelo are the object, come late in the day.
Do not confuse the two Barrakkas. The Lower Barrakka Gardens sit at the far end of the same bastion line, also in Valletta and also free, with their own view over the Grand Harbour, and they are much quieter.
On footwear and access: the garden itself is level and reached without steps from Castille Place, and the lift gives step free access from harbour level. The Saluting Battery below is a different matter, described by its operator as a scheduled monument with steps of varying width and height, so wear something you can manage stairs in. Free audio guides in ten languages are available at the battery’s front desk, and tripods and selfie sticks are not allowed inside it without prior arrangement.
Half a day works well from here. The gardens, the battery and the War Rooms sit within a hundred metres of each other, and St John’s Co-Cathedral, the Grand Master’s Palace and Fort St Elmo are all fifteen minutes on foot or less across Valletta and the Grand Harbour.
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