Marsalforn

Where it sits. Marsalforn lies on Gozo's north coast, three kilometres from Victoria at the seaward end of a broad valley that drains the island's central plateau. It falls within the boundaries of Żebbuġ, though it long ago outgrew its parent village in visitor numbers. The bay faces north-northeast, which makes it sheltered from the prevailing northwesterly and exposed to the winter gregale — a combination that produced a good fishing harbour for most of the year and a wave-battered seafront for a few weeks of it. Roughly a thousand people live here year-round; in August the population multiplies several times over.

From fishing cove to resort. Marsalforn was a working fishing village until well into the twentieth century, and before that a landing place used by anyone with reason to approach Gozo from the north, including raiders. The Maltese marsa means harbour; the second element is usually derived from a word for oven or bakery, though the etymology is contested. Its transformation began in the 1960s when Gozitan and Maltese families started building summer houses along the shore, and accelerated through the 1970s and 1980s into a dense band of apartment blocks that now lines the bay. The development happened faster than planning could restrain it, and Marsalforn is frequently cited in Maltese debates about coastal building as the example of what nobody wants repeated. What survives underneath is still a fishing village: painted luzzu boats moored in the inner bay, nets drying on the quay, and a handful of families who have worked these waters for generations.

What you actually see today. The beach at the head of the bay is small — a strip of imported sand backed by a promenade, with rock platforms and ladders providing better swimming on both flanks. A row of restaurants, bars and dive schools runs along the front. On the hill west of the bay stands a large stone figure of Christ the Saviour, the third statue to occupy the site since the beginning of the twentieth century, the present one dating from the 1970s; a path climbs to it in about fifteen minutes and returns the best overview of the coast. Qbajjar Bay, a five-minute walk west, is quieter and rockier, with a shallow shelf good for children.

The salt pans. The coastal walk west from Qbajjar towards Xwejni is the single best reason to come here. For roughly three kilometres the shore platform has been cut into a chequerboard of shallow rectangular pans, some of them worked for around 350 years, connected by channels and low walls and filled by wave wash and hand-carried seawater. Between May and September the pans are worked in a slow cycle: seawater is admitted, evaporates under the summer sun, and the resulting crust is raked, gathered and stored in caves cut into the cliff behind. Several Gozitan families still hold and work sections of the pans, selling the salt from small shopfronts in the rock. At Xwejni Bay the walk passes a mushroom-shaped boulder of harder rock left standing as the softer stone around it eroded — the most photographed object on this coast.

Further along the coast. Beyond Xwejni, the shore rises into cliffs and the path continues to Wied il-Għasri, a narrow steep-sided inlet reached by a flight of steps cut into the rock, ending in a pebble beach only a few metres wide with clear deep water and a cave at the entrance — a swimming and snorkelling spot of a completely different order from the bay behind. Above it stands Ġordan Lighthouse, built by the British in 1853 on the island's highest northern hill, its beam visible far out into the channel. Reqqa Point, between Xwejni and Għasri, is a well-known dive site with a wall dropping to around fifty metres.

Getting there and timing. Buses 310 and 322 connect Victoria with Marsalforn in about ten minutes and run frequently in summer. Parking along the front is difficult in August and easy the rest of the year. The salt pans are at their most photogenic in late morning when the water in the shallow squares is still and reflective, and at their most active in July and August when the harvest is in progress. May, June, September and October give warm water without the crowds; winter closes most of the restaurants but delivers a spectacular sea against the promenade. The promenade and pans walk are largely level and firm; the descent to Wied il-Għasri is a long stair.