Fort Saint Michael

Where it stood. Fort Saint Michael occupied the high ground at the landward end of the Senglea peninsula, the neck where the spit of rock joins the mainland at Cospicua. That position is the whole point of it. Senglea's seaward tip could be covered by guns from Fort St Angelo across Dockyard Creek, but the base of the peninsula was open to attack from the ridges inland, and without a work on that neck the town was indefensible. Anyone walking up Senglea's main street from the land gate today is walking straight over the site.

Why it was built in a hurry. In 1551 an Ottoman force raided Malta and then sacked Gozo, carrying off most of its population. The shock of that summer produced two emergency fortifications, both begun in 1552: Fort St Elmo on the Sciberras peninsula, and Fort Saint Michael on the neck of what was then a bare, unbuilt spit of land called Isola. The Order brought in military engineers from Sicily to lay them out, and both were small, angular artillery works thrown up fast rather than considered set pieces. Grand Master Claude de la Sengle then walled the peninsula behind the fort and encouraged settlement, which is how the town of Senglea came into existence at all.

1565. Fort Saint Michael's month arrived thirteen years later. During the Great Siege, Ottoman batteries were established on the Corradino heights and on the Santa Margherita ridge above Bormla, from where they could pound both Senglea and Birgu, and the assault troops came at the peninsula from the landward side and from the water. The most famous action came on 15 July 1565, when boats carrying janissaries were rowed round to strike Senglea's flank and were destroyed by a masked battery firing at almost point-blank range from the Birgu shore. Through the summer the two towns functioned as a single fortress: a bridge of boats spanned Dockyard Creek so that men and powder could be shifted to whichever front was collapsing that day, and Fort Saint Michael's guns held the ground that made this possible.

What happened to it. After the siege the Order rebuilt the work on a larger scale, raising it into a cavalier — a high gun platform designed to fire over the walls in front of it — which was completed in 1581 and known thereafter as Saint Michael Cavalier. It kept that role for centuries, but its military logic evaporated once the outer Santa Margherita and Cottonera Lines were built further inland in the seventeenth century, pushing the defensive perimeter well beyond Senglea. Under British rule the site was progressively adapted for barracks and housing, and in the twentieth century the cavalier was largely demolished. Only part of its base survives today, absorbed into later buildings and the fabric of the street.

What you actually see. This is an entry for people who read cities rather than tick off monuments. There is no ticket office, no circuit and no restored interior. What there is, once you know to look, is topography and masonry: a stretch of massive, battered stonework of a different scale and coursing from the houses around it, the sudden change of level as the ground rises from the land gate, and the way the street grid bends to accommodate something that is no longer there. Stand on the high ground and the strategic argument becomes obvious in about ten seconds — you can see down both creeks, across to Birgu, and inland to the ridges where the Ottoman guns were placed.

Reading it on the ground. Approach from the Senglea land gate and walk up the main street; the rise you climb in the first two hundred metres is the fort's glacis and its site. Look for older stone incorporated at ground level in the blocks to either side, and for the abrupt drops down the side lanes towards French Creek, which show how narrow the neck really is. The area was heavily bombed in 1941 and 1942 because of the dockyard immediately below, so much of the surrounding fabric is postwar, which makes the surviving older masonry easier rather than harder to pick out.

Getting there and timing. Buses stop outside the Senglea land gate; the Valletta passenger ferry lands at Birgu, from where it is a fifteen-minute walk around the head of Dockyard Creek. There is nothing to pay and nothing to book. Give it twenty minutes as part of a longer Senglea walk that continues to the stone vedette at the point, which is ten minutes further on and gives the finest harbour view in Malta. Morning light is better here than evening, since the ground faces roughly north-east across the creek. Sturdy shoes help: the lanes are steep, stepped and polished by centuries of use.