Marsaskala

Where it sits. Marsaskala — also written Marsascala, and known in Maltese equally as Wied il-Għajn, the valley of the spring — stands on the eastern coast of Malta around a long, narrow inlet that reaches almost a kilometre inland on a northeast-to-southwest axis. The creek is so slender that from the head of it the open sea is a bright slot between two low limestone shoulders. The town is about eleven kilometres from Valletta by road. To the south, beyond the blunt headland of Ras iż-Żonqor, opens the wider and rougher St Thomas Bay; to the north the coast runs on towards Xgħajra and the approaches to the Grand Harbour. The first half of the name is the same marsa, harbour, that recurs all along this coast; the second is usually traced to Sicilian settlers.

From fishing hamlet to seaside town. For most of its recorded existence this was a handful of boathouses and a few fields belonging to Żejtun, valued for the spring that gave the valley its Maltese name. It grew first as a summer retreat for Maltese families in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, then explosively from the 1970s onward, and today it is a permanent town of well over ten thousand people whose ridges are packed with apartment blocks. The parish church, dedicated to St Anne, was built in 1953 and the town's feast falls at the end of July. The transformation has not been uniformly kind to the coastline, but the inner creek keeps its working character: fishing boats still lie on moorings in the shallow water at the head of the inlet, and the salt pans cut into the flat rock shelf on the northern side are still harvested in summer.

The towers and the raid of 1614. Guarding the southern approach stands Saint Thomas Tower, a huge square bastioned work with corner turrets completed in 1614 — the third of the six great towers built under Grand Master Alof de Wignacourt, and the largest watchtower on the islands. It went up in direct response to a serious Ottoman landing at St Thomas Bay that same year, when a raiding force came ashore and pushed inland towards Żejtun before the Order's cavalry drove it back to its galleys. An artillery battery was added to the tower's seaward face in the early eighteenth century. On the ridge above St Thomas Bay stands a second, stranger structure: Mamo Tower, a small private cruciform tower of the mid-seventeenth century, built on a Greek-cross plan by a local family and unlike anything else in Malta.

What there is to do. The seafront promenade around the creek is flat, wide and genuinely pleasant to walk end to end, and it is lined with the highest concentration of fish restaurants on this coast — Marsaskala is where people from the Three Cities drive out to eat on a Sunday. There is a swimming zone with ladders on the rock shelves rather than a sand beach; St Thomas Bay to the south has a mix of shingle, rock and small sandy patches and a long row of ramshackle boathouses. The Marsaskala Family Park on the Żonqor side is a large landscaped open space with paths, pines and views back over the town. The coast walk south past St Thomas Tower towards Xrobb l-Għaġin crosses open garrigue with sea squill, thyme and, in spring, a good showing of orchids.

A landmark ruin. Above St Thomas Bay stands the shell of the Jerma Palace Hotel, opened in the 1980s, closed in 2007 and left derelict for well over a decade while ownership and planning disputes ground on. Its concrete carcass became one of the most photographed abandoned buildings in Malta and a standing local grievance; demolition and redevelopment have been repeatedly announced. The Żonqor headland beyond it was itself the focus of a national controversy in 2015 over a proposal to build a private university campus on undeveloped public land.

Getting there and timing. Direct buses run from Valletta in around forty minutes and from the Three Cities more quickly; there is also a useful link to Marsaxlokk. Driving in is easy, though parking near the restaurants is scarce on summer evenings and on Sundays. The creek faces roughly east, so mornings are bright and the water is calmest early; a strong grigal from the northeast pushes swell straight up the inlet and can make swimming unpleasant. Late spring and early autumn are the best windows. The town is at its liveliest, and loudest, around the St Anne feast at the end of July, when the fireworks are set off over the water.