Palazzo Vilhena

Where it sits. Vilhena Palace occupies the whole southern side of St Publius Square, the first open space inside Mdina's main gate, so it is the first substantial building anyone entering the city meets. The plan is a broad U wrapped around a walled forecourt, with a central block set back behind a screen wall and two wings reaching toward the square. This siting was a deliberate act of urban surgery: the medieval fabric that had stood here was cleared to give the new palace room, and the old town council, the Università, was moved out and rehoused a short distance away in a new building of its own.

Vilhena and Mondion. The palace was built between 1726 and 1728 for Grand Master António Manoel de Vilhena, the Portuguese head of the Order of St John whose reign left more physical marks on Malta than almost any other — Fort Manoel, the Manoel Theatre and the rebuilding of Mdina all belong to him. The designer was Charles François de Mondion, a French military engineer who had come to the islands to work on fortifications and stayed to become the closest thing eighteenth-century Malta had to a court architect. Mondion is buried in Mdina. The style is French Baroque adapted to Maltese limestone: a monumental portal with Vilhena's marble bust and arms above it, a rusticated base, and a restrained rhythm of windows that is more Versailles than Valletta.

Three afterlives. The building has spent most of its existence doing something other than housing a Grand Master. During the cholera outbreak of 1837 it served as an emergency hospital. From 1908 it was converted into the Connaught Hospital, a sanatorium for tuberculosis patients, which it remained for roughly half a century — a use that explains the long shuttered corridors and the terraces cut into the garden front. After the sanatorium closed the palace stood partly empty until 1973, when it was given to the National Museum of Natural History.

What is inside now. The museum fills some two dozen rooms with the natural history of the Maltese islands and beyond: geology and the story of how a limestone platform rose out of the Mediterranean, fossils from the local Globigerina and Coralline beds, thousands of mineral samples, insect and shell cabinets, and taxidermy collections of birds and mammals arranged in the old-fashioned case-by-case manner. Some of the displays are frankly dated, and that is part of the appeal — this is a Victorian-style natural history collection in a Baroque palace, and the tension between the two is the most interesting thing about the visit. Sections on Maltese endemic species and on the migration routes that bring raptors and warblers over the islands each spring and autumn are the strongest content.

What to look for architecturally. Stand back in the square to read the portal properly: the bust of Vilhena, the sculpted arms, the trophies, and the balcony above. The forecourt gates and the screen wall are original. Inside, the main staircase and several vaulted halls survive, though the hospital conversions removed much of the original decoration. The garden front looks out over the ditch toward Rabat and Howard Gardens, and from the outer terrace you get a clear view of how the palace is welded onto the city wall.

The square it commands. St Publius Square is the one place in Mdina where the 1720s programme can be read whole. The palace holds the long side; opposite stands the Torre dello Standardo, the squat signal tower from which alarms were relayed across the island by flag and beacon; alongside it the Corte Capitanale, the old courthouse, carries an open loggia and the motto Legibus et Armis — by laws and by arms — under a balcony from which sentences were once read aloud. A short walk away, the Banca Giuratale of 1726 was built to rehouse the displaced town council and now holds part of the National Archives. Four buildings, one architect, one decade: the square is a small, complete statement of what Vilhena wanted the old capital to look like.

Getting there and timing. Enter through the main gate and turn immediately right; the entrance is thirty seconds' walk. Buses 51, 52 and 53 from Valletta reach Rabat in around 35 minutes, then five minutes on foot. Heritage Malta runs the museum, so the site is covered by the multi-site pass, and admission is inexpensive on its own. Opening hours run through the middle of the day and end in the late afternoon, earlier than the restaurants in the city. An hour is enough for most visitors, ninety minutes if the geology holds your attention. The ground floor is largely level, but the upper rooms are reached by stairs, and there is a step at the entrance.