Comino

Where it sits. Comino lies in the middle of the channel between Malta and Gozo, a slab of limestone about three and a half square kilometres in area, two kilometres long, and nowhere much more than seventy metres high. Administratively it belongs to Għajnsielem on Gozo. Its Maltese name, Kemmuna, comes from the cumin that once grew wild on it. The island has no cars, no shops outside the summer season, no street lighting and no permanent commerce; its registered resident population has hovered between two and four people for years, and in some years at zero. In August it receives several thousand visitors a day. That contrast is the central fact about the place.

The Blue Lagoon. The reason most people come is the narrow strait between Comino and the islet of Cominotto, where a shallow bed of pale sand and broken shell sits under two to five metres of water and turns it a saturated turquoise that looks artificially enhanced in photographs and is not. The channel is only a few dozen metres wide and sheltered from most directions, so the water is usually flat. There is almost no beach — the shore is rock ledge, with a small patch of sand — and in high summer the ledges and the water itself are crowded to a degree that has become a national controversy. Protests organised in 2022 against the commercial occupation of the shoreline by deckchair and kiosk operators led to government restrictions on how much of the lagoon may be given over to rented furniture.

The Knights' island. The Order of St John used Comino as a hunting reserve, a place of banishment for knights who had offended, and a serious defensive problem, since corsairs used its coves as a base from which to raid both larger islands. Their answer stands on the southwest cliff: Saint Mary's Tower, built in 1618 under Grand Master Alof de Wignacourt, a square block with four corner turrets on a heavily battered plinth, its walls several metres thick, positioned to see and signal both Malta and Gozo. It was restored by the heritage organisation Din l-Art Ħelwa in the early 2000s and is open on limited days. Santa Marija Battery, a semicircular coastal gun position of 1715–16, guards the northern approach, and a small chapel dedicated to the Assumption — rebuilt in 1618 on older foundations — still hosts Mass on feast days.

On screen. Saint Mary's Tower stood in for the Château d'If, the island fortress prison off Marseille, in the 2002 film of The Count of Monte Cristo starring Jim Caviezel and Guy Pearce. The tower's isolation, its clean geometry and the absence of any modern structure in any direction made it a straightforward substitution, and the surrounding cliffs were used for the escape sequences. Comino's blank, treeless landscape has drawn other productions for the same reason: there is nothing in shot that dates the location.

What else is on the island. Away from the lagoon the island empties within ten minutes of walking. Santa Marija Bay on the north coast has a genuine sandy beach, a stand of tamarisk trees that provide the only real shade on Comino, the chapel, and a police post staffed in summer; a permit-only campsite operates behind it. Tracks cross the interior through low garrigue of thyme, spurge and wild caper. The island is a Natura 2000 site and was declared a bird sanctuary in 2017, ending hunting and trapping; it is an important stopover for migrating birds and holds breeding seabirds on the cliffs. The hotel that operated at San Niklaw Bay from the 1960s has been closed since 2020, so there is currently no accommodation beyond camping.

Under the water. Comino is one of the strongest diving areas in the Maltese islands. Santa Marija Caves on the northeast coast are a complex of shallow swim-through caverns at ten to fifteen metres with resident shoals of bream. Lantern Point at the southern tip is a vertical chimney dropping from about sixteen to fifty metres. The patrol boat P31, scuttled off the island in 2009, sits upright in around twenty metres and is accessible to relatively inexperienced divers.

Getting there and timing. Passenger ferries run from Ċirkewwa on Malta and Mġarr on Gozo, each about twenty to twenty-five minutes, with additional excursion boats from Sliema, Buġibba and Marsalforn in season. Nothing runs reliably outside roughly April to October. The first boat of the morning and the period after four in the afternoon are the only times in high summer when the lagoon is bearable; May, June and late September deliver the same water with a fraction of the people. Bring water and shade, because the island supplies neither.