Stone upon stone: an Italian sojourn: Protectors of pilgrims, healers of the sick

The view from our balcony was hard to leave when we woke up. We could have spent the day just there and not felt it wasted.

A welcome walk the owner had left for us, though, took us around the rocky point to our left overlooked by luxury high rises, where we found a French cafe which yielded superb espresso and wicked pain au chocolate for breakfast. We will return.

Sliema is a more modern part of Valetta, and new high end apartments are being constructed here with the verve of Trajan's times. A smart shopping centre services them all and here we did our essential shopping before settling down to a delicious lunch of Maltese rustic breads, charcuterie, delicious sundried tomatoes and home grown olives and local cheeses, gbejna: true Mediterranean fare.

A few steps right from our apartment we found a 1.50€ ferry option across to Valetta, thinking we might do an orientation walk, but talking to a local couple enroute we took their advice and headed off for a multi-media historical overview of the city, called 'The Malta Experience". So, once we landed we then hopped on a small red shuttle that took us to the tip of the island, built as the Fort of St Elmo in the sixteenth century by the island rulers, the Knights Hospitallers, to defend their island, as Malta was on every sailing map at the time for every pirate ship and profiteer -- and every potential invader.

Here, we paid our fee and entered a theatre for a visual history show of Malta which told us that the first known settlers to the island were random boat people, who very likely came via Sicily, wandering south looking for opportunities, in neolithic times. We will have to explore the remnants of their stone temples and ruins another day as they look so amazingly intact, despite being erected some seven thousand years ago. Today, though, we are fast-forwarding a few island invasions -- by the Phoenicians, the Greeks, the Romans, Arabs, French and British -- and going back to a time when Malta came to be ruled by the Knights Hospitallers. Who were responsible for building most of the structures, harbours and fortifications we can see from our apartment balcony.

As Muslims travel to Mecca to pay their respects, Christians long ago travelled to Jerusalem, the Holy Land. There many good Samaritans volunteered their services to care for sick and injured pilgrims. These volunteers, over time, became extremely skilful in all areas of medicine and surgery, and were noted for their amazing surgery speed and recovery rates after the removal of damaged limbs and organs. They created their own cures, many relying on honey, turpentine, and the benefits of citrus to repair and salve and purify chopped limbs. They attracted more volunteers and expanded their service to protect pilgrims enroute to the Holy Land. So they became skilled in defence as well as medicine. But, once Jerusalem was conquered by Islamic forces, the Knights Hospitallers, as they were called, were forced to move on to Rhodes. But, from here, too, they were eventually ousted, but found shelter finally in Malta, when Charles 1 of Spain gave them this tiny island to administer.

Here they planned to stay, so set about building themselves a protected city, with walls of stone, forts of stone, palaces of stone, and hospitals of stone, digging themselves in. They were not planning to be ousted from here. The stone literally came from the fabric of the island we were told.

After the media history in the theatre a group of us went with one of the guides to visit the wards of the famous holy infirmary that they built in 1574, Sacra Infermeria, which treated all sexes, all race, all religions: no one was turned away. Though the rich entered through the front door. The poor, who did not have to be wooed for charitable donations, came the back way, through tunnels and staircases from beneath the building.

These were excavated during construction as the limestone for the infirmary came from the ground beneath its very foundation. It was dug out, and used in slabs above. So, the basements of much of the infirmary are cavernous holes once filled with the gritty limestone that now weighs the island down and sits high on its skin.

We visited the men's ward: a long rectangular space that was built to hold hundreds of single beds separated from each other by flushing vented toilets, all partitioned off for added privacy by woven tapestries and fabric bed drapes. Ensuited hospital beds some six hundred years ago! How far, now, are we from that. Moreover, they ate from silver salvers -- to reduce infection, and their treatment hall had an outlook on to a sweet-smelling citrus garden where they could no doubt wander, and take their visitors for a stroll.

On the floor below was the poor ward, with its vaulted ceilings ornately decorated in curlicued frescoes, hand-painted.

Here, the in-patients were more likely three to a large bed, each bed in a numbered space, the remnants of number 114 bed still visible here on the gorgeous handprinted wall marker.

Today, the poor ward is used for functions. Most recently, an Indian Prince flew 900 guests from India to Malta for his wedding, booking out an entire hotel, close by, along with the complete building that the Kights had once used as their hospital for his reception.

Evening was closing in as we walked back to the ferry around the fortified walls and beneath the galleried windows of the beautiful buildings lining the waterfront. There are glimpse of long stairwells climbing hills to spires and towers in the inner heart of the city. So much still to see, and always too little time.

We head home on our ferry and have a quick aperitif and some garlic mushrooms on our balcony before making dinner and heading to bed.

Our legs are tired after two big walking days. We need healing sleep. And had a knight in shining armour been close by we might each have begged a massage.