Mdina through the ages

Mdina in 1550

The Old Capital

Mdina in 1550 sits as Malta’s old capital on its defensible ridge, diminished in political power since the Hospitallers settled at the coast but still the island’s centre of noble households and ecclesiastical authority. The walk shows thick limestone walls and gates, narrow sun-bent lanes, escutcheoned noble doorways and the cathedral’s towers, with carob and wheat fields falling away to the distant harbours.

A compact medieval citadel of warm, honey-coloured limestone, Mdina’s silhouette in 1550 is low and crenellated: curtain walls, towers and punctured bastions set above a dry ditch, a squat cathedral with bell towers, and tightly packed flat-roofed houses whose carved doorways and inner courtyards break the roofline. Streets are narrow and windward-bent, catching sharp Mediterranean light and deep shadow; below the walls lie patchwork fields of wheat and scattered carob trees that run to the horizon.

Planned from the Wikipedia record: Mdina.