Basilica of St. Helen, Birkirkara

Where it sits. Birkirkara is Malta's most populous locality, a dense inland town of well over twenty-five thousand people occupying the valley floor and slopes between Msida, Santa Venera, Balzan and San Ġwann, about four kilometres from Valletta. It has no coastline, no fortifications and no obvious tourist frontage, and most visitors experience it only as traffic on the way to somewhere else. That is a mistake of routing rather than of merit: Birkirkara holds one of the finest Baroque churches in the country, the atmospheric ruin of its predecessor, the surviving relics of Malta's abandoned railway, and stretches of the seventeenth-century aqueduct that made settlement here possible in the first place.

The story behind it. The town takes its name from an Arabic-derived phrase referring to running water, and water is the whole explanation for the place. It sits at the confluence of valleys that drain a large part of central Malta, which made it fertile, floodable and worth farming long before there was a town. Birkirkara was one of the small number of parishes recorded in the medieval period, and it was so large that Balzan, Lija and eventually other localities were successively detached from it. Wealth arrived with cotton and with proximity to the harbour towns; industrial-era Malta added ribbon development along the main roads, and by the twentieth century the town had swallowed its own fields. It is now divided into five parishes, an unusual arrangement that produces a correspondingly complicated calendar of feasts.

St Helen's Basilica and the old church. The collegiate basilica of St Helen, built between roughly 1727 and 1745 to designs by Domenico Cachia, is the town's set piece — a monumental Baroque façade of coupled columns, deep cornices and a broken pediment, with an interior of vaults, gilding and marble that ranks with the best on the island. Its titular statue is among the largest carried in procession anywhere in Malta, which is why the August feast draws crowds from across the country. A short distance away stands the old parish church of the Assumption, begun in the early seventeenth century and abandoned after structural failure: a roofless, partly restored Mannerist shell whose austere façade and empty nave are a striking counterweight to the exuberance of its replacement.

Trains, water and the town's odd relics. Birkirkara was the principal intermediate station on the Malta Railway, the narrow-gauge line that ran from Valletta to Mdina between 1883 and 1931 and then closed for good, unable to compete with buses. The station building survives in a public garden at the edge of the town centre, with a preserved locomotive standing on a short length of track — the most tangible remains of a railway that Malta has otherwise erased. On the Santa Venera side, arches of the Wignacourt Aqueduct of 1610–1615 still cross the urban landscape, and the district called Fleur-de-Lys takes its name from the heraldic arch that Grand Master Alof de Wignacourt set on the line of his water channel.

What you actually see today. Birkirkara is not picturesque and does not pretend to be. It is a working Maltese town of narrow streets, tall terraced houses, small workshops, bakeries, band clubs and football supporters — the local club is one of the country's most successful — with heavy traffic on the through routes and quiet residential grids behind them. The rewards are specific: the basilica square in the evening, the ruined old church, the railway garden, the covered market area, and the small bars where the town's social life actually happens. It is also the best place in central Malta to see how the island's urban fabric works when it is not dressed for visitors.

Getting there and timing. Almost every bus route across central Malta passes through or near Birkirkara, and the town is a ten-minute drive from Valletta outside rush hour, considerably longer inside it. Driving into the centre is not recommended; the streets are narrow, one-way systems are confusing and parking is scarce. Spring and autumn are comfortable; the valley traps heat in July and August. The town is at its most memorable in the week following 18 August, when the St Helen feast fills the streets with damask hangings, gilded pedestals, band marches and one of the heaviest fireworks programmes in Malta, and the enormous titular statue is carried out of the basilica at dusk. Visitors interested in the ruined old church should check locally before travelling, as access to the interior depends on ongoing conservation work; the exterior can be seen at any time from the surrounding street.