Senglea

Where it sits. Senglea is the middle finger of land in the Grand Harbour's southern shore, a peninsula roughly seven hundred metres long and barely two hundred wide, with Dockyard Creek on one side and French Creek on the other. Maltese speakers call it L-Isla, the island, which is what it effectively was before the isthmus was fortified. Because so little ground was ever available, the town was built dense and vertical: it is among the most densely populated localities in Europe, with something close to 2,700 people living on a fraction of a square kilometre. One straight spine, Victory Street, runs the length of the peninsula from the land gate to the point, with side lanes dropping steeply to the water on both flanks.

The story behind it. The peninsula was uninhabited scrub called Isola di San Giuliano until Grand Master Claude de la Sengle walled it in the 1550s and gave it his name. Fort St Michael was thrown up on the high ground at the landward end in 1552, and the whole spit was made defensible in a hurry because everyone in the Order knew an Ottoman assault was coming. It came in 1565. Senglea was attacked from the water on 15 July by troops ferried across from Marsamxett, and the assault was destroyed partly by a concealed battery firing across the creek from the Birgu shore. The town's honorific, Città Invicta, dates from that summer.

The vedette. At the very tip, on the bastion above Safe Haven Garden, stands the small stone watch turret that has become Malta's most reproduced single object. It is carved on its outer faces with an eye and an ear, and a crane holding a stone in its raised claw, the classical emblem of the sentry who does not fall asleep. From the platform beside it you look straight up the harbour: Fort St Angelo to the right, the whole length of Valletta's bastions opposite, the Saluting Battery and the Barrakka Gardens directly across, and cruise ships sliding past close enough to read their names. It is a public garden, free, and it is the best free viewpoint in the country.

What the war did. Senglea's proximity to the naval dockyard in French Creek made it one of the most bombed places on earth in the early 1940s. When the carrier HMS Illustrious was towed in for repairs in January 1941, the Luftwaffe attacked the creek for days; the parish church took a direct hit and the town lost the great majority of its buildings. Residents were evacuated inland and many never returned. Rebuilding was pragmatic rather than sentimental, so the streets today are a patchwork: a surviving Baroque doorway with a carved corbel beside a plain 1950s block, and then another survivor. The parish church of the Nativity of Our Lady was reconstructed after the war and raised to basilica status; its venerated statue, saved from the rubble, is carried through the streets on 8 September, the same date the 1565 siege was lifted.

What you actually see today. Walk in through the land gate and up Victory Street past the band clubs, then take any lane to the left and you arrive at a parapet above French Creek with the working shipyard directly below: dry docks, cranes, hulls in various states of undress. Take a lane to the right and you are above Dockyard Creek looking at Birgu's marina. That double aspect, industrial on one side and restored on the other, is what makes Senglea more interesting than a simple pretty-town verdict allows. The waterfront at the base of the peninsula has been reclaimed as a promenade with a few restaurants and a small ferry landing. Steps are constant and steep; there is no flat route to the point.

Getting there and timing. The Valletta ferry lands at Birgu, and from there it is a fifteen-minute walk around the head of Dockyard Creek, or a short hop on the small boat that shuttles across the creek. Buses stop outside the land gate. Parking inside the town is effectively impossible and should not be attempted. Go in the late afternoon: the sun sets behind Valletta as seen from the point, which means the bastions opposite glow while you are standing in shade. Spring and autumn are the sensible seasons; in high summer the treeless limestone holds heat well past midnight. The gardens at the tip stay open into the evening and are a favourite spot for locals rather than a tourist enclosure.