Xarolla Windmill

Where it sits. The Xarolla Windmill stands on the southwestern edge of Żurrieq, in southern Malta, on high open ground between the village and the plateau that runs out to the Blue Grotto and the cliffs at Wied iż-Żurrieq. Żurrieq is one of the oldest continuously inhabited settlements on the island, and the mill sits where the built-up streets give way to fields, which is precisely where the wind is. From the platform around the tower the view runs south over stone-walled plots towards the coast; the dome of the parish church of St Catherine anchors the skyline behind.

A Vilhena mill. The windmill was built in 1724 under Grand Master António Manoel de Vilhena, one of the mills funded through the Fondazione Manoel, the endowment the Order of St John set up to give Malta a domestic milling capacity and lessen its dependence on grain and flour shipped from Sicily. The form is the standard Maltese one and is worth reading from the outside: a square two-storey block containing the miller's dwelling, with a round tapering tower rising through the middle of it and four arms carrying canvas sails rigged on wooden spars in a manner borrowed directly from the island's boats. Stone stairs on the outside of the block reach the roof terrace; the tower is entered from there.

Still turning. What separates Xarolla from the several dozen surviving Maltese windmill shells is that it works. The building was restored in the later twentieth century, the machinery repaired, and the sails re-rigged, and it is one of very few mills in the islands capable of turning under wind and grinding grain. Demonstrations are run on open days, and the interior retains the vertical shaft, the wooden gearing and the millstones on their timber floor. Watching the stones run, with the whole tower creaking and dust rising off the meal, is a different order of experience from looking at a static display, and it explains why milling was a trade with status in a village economy: the miller controlled the point at which grain became food.

The tomb underneath. Restoration and clearance work at the site turned up something unexpected. Cut into the rock beneath and beside the mill is a Punic and Roman rock-cut tomb complex — shafts dropping to chambers with rock-cut burial benches, of a type well known across southern Malta and dating broadly to the last few centuries BC and the early centuries AD. The tombs were cleared and are shown to visitors on some openings, reached by a ladder or steps down a shaft. The juxtaposition is the sort of thing Malta does routinely: an eighteenth-century grain mill built, without anyone knowing, directly on top of a two-thousand-year-old cemetery, on ground that has been useful to somebody in every century since.

What you actually see today. The visit is short — perhaps half an hour with the tower, longer if a milling demonstration is running or if the tombs are open. Do not expect a polished heritage attraction; expect a working building looked after by people from the village. Inside the dwelling block are displays of domestic and agricultural equipment; the tower stair is narrow and steep in the usual way. Look at the sail spars and the mechanism for turning the cap into the wind, at the thickness of the tower wall at its base, and at the wear on the millstones. The surrounding ground has been laid out with parking and a small open area, and a chapel and cemetery stand close by.

Practicalities. The mill is managed locally rather than by Heritage Malta, and openings depend on the local council and a volunteer group, so hours are limited and irregular and are best confirmed before travelling; entry is either free or a nominal charge, and guides are volunteers who know the building thoroughly. Buses from Valletta reach Żurrieq square in about forty minutes, and the mill is a ten-minute walk from there through the village.

Making a day of it. Żurrieq sits in the middle of a dense concentration of things worth seeing in southern Malta. Wied iż-Żurrieq and the Blue Grotto boat trips are about three kilometres away; the temples at Ħaġar Qim and Mnajdra are a short drive west along the coast road at Qrendi; the sunken circular field of Il-Maqluba, a collapsed doline surrounded by legend, is at Qrendi too. Autumn and winter suit this part of the island: the fields are green, the light is long, and the exposed plateau around the mill is not the furnace it becomes between June and September. Windy days, unhelpful elsewhere, are the good ones here — a mill that can turn is only interesting when there is something to turn it, and a stiff northwesterly is what the whole building was designed around.