Holidays in Malta

Official national public holidays. Regional and religious observances may vary by area.

About Time in Malta

A Corridor Built to Catch the Sun

On the southern coast of Malta stand the temples of Mnajdra, a cluster of megalithic structures raised from local limestone roughly five thousand years ago, making them older than Stonehenge and, by most datings, older than the pyramids of Giza. What distinguishes the south temple from its neighbours is not scale or decoration but orientation: its main axis points precisely at the point on the horizon where the sun rises on the spring and autumn equinoxes, and on those mornings a beam of light travels the full length of the entrance corridor to illuminate the innermost chamber, splitting the interior into two symmetrical halves of light and shadow.

At the solstices, the same mechanism performs differently rather than failing altogether. On the summer and winter solstices, the sunrise light instead strikes carved stones set at the edges of the corridor rather than travelling to the centre, a secondary alignment researchers have measured to within a fraction of a degree of accuracy. Archaeologists still debate some of the finer details, including whether an additional, less prominent alignment recorded at Mnajdra was aimed at the equinox sun or at the heliacal rising of the Pleiades star cluster, but the broad conclusion has held since systematic surveys began in the 1980s: without writing, metal tools or any instrument more sophisticated than sightlines and patience, Neolithic builders on this small island constructed a functioning solar calendar accurate enough that visitors still gather before dawn each equinox to watch it work exactly as intended.

Two Clocks to Outwit the Devil

Visitors to Malta's churches often notice something that looks, at first glance, like a maintenance failure: many belfries carry two separate clock faces, and the two rarely agree with each other. Local tradition offers a specific explanation rather than mere neglect. According to the legend, repeated across the islands' parishes for generations, one clock tells the correct time while the second is deliberately set wrong, so that the Devil, checking the tower to learn exactly when Mass begins in order to cause mischief, is misled and arrives at the wrong hour.

The tradition is charming enough that it has become something of a tourist attraction in its own right, but a closer look at individual churches complicates the simple version of the story. At St John's Co-Cathedral in Valletta, for instance, what appears to be a third clock face is not a false time at all but a separate dial recording the day of the week, part of a mechanism built by the Maltese clockmaker Clerici and connected to bells cast around 1619. Surveys of other village churches have found similar patterns, with the "wrong" face frequently displaying a date rather than a fabricated hour. Whether the devil-confusing legend describes the original intent behind these clocks or was layered on afterward to explain an old and genuinely confusing arrangement of dials, it remains one of the most consistently repeated pieces of folklore on the islands, told half-seriously by residents who nonetheless make sure, when giving directions, to specify which clock face a visitor should actually trust.

Thirty-One Days the Ottomans Did Not Expect

When the Ottoman fleet appeared off Malta on 18 May 1565, its commanders anticipated a swift campaign. Their first target was the small star-shaped Fort St Elmo, guarding the entrance to Grand Harbour, held by a garrison the Knights Hospitaller themselves considered expendable in the wider defence of the island; Ottoman officers reportedly expected it to fall within days under sustained cannon fire.

It held for thirty-one days instead, finally falling on 23 June after a defence so costly that the Ottoman corsair commander Turgut Reis was killed by rock splinters from the bombardment before it ended. That unexpected month bought the rest of the island's defenders, under Grand Master Jean de Valette, critical time to strengthen the fortifications around Birgu and Senglea and to await the relief force being assembled in Sicily. The wider siege dragged on until 11 September, nearly four months in total, when a Spanish relief fleet finally landed and the depleted Ottoman force withdrew, defeated in a campaign that had been expected to be a formality and was instead decided, in large part, by the extra month that a single fort's defenders had bought with their own lives.

The Tanker That Arrived on the Feast Day

By August 1942, more than two years into a sustained Axis siege by air and sea, Malta was weeks from starvation and had almost no aviation fuel left to keep its defending aircraft flying. A convoy codenamed Operation Pedestal set out from Britain on 3 August, carrying supplies escorted by a fleet large enough to include several aircraft carriers, in what amounted to a race against the island's dwindling reserves as much as against the enemy.

Of the convoy's merchant ships, most were sunk or crippled before reaching Malta, but the American-built tanker SS Ohio, carrying the fuel the island needed most, survived torpedo strikes and bomb damage that broke her back and killed her engines, only to be lashed between two Royal Navy destroyers that towed and physically supported her the rest of the way. She limped into Grand Harbour on 15 August 1942, which happened to fall on the Feast of the Assumption, a major holy day in the island's Catholic calendar known locally as Santa Marija. To the Maltese watching from the harbour walls, a fuel tanker arriving on exactly that date after being given up for lost felt less like coincidence than providence, and the convoy has been remembered on the island ever since as Il-Konvoj ta' Santa Marija, the Santa Marija Convoy.

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