Ta' Xbiex

Where it sits. Ta' Xbiex is a small headland pushing into Marsamxett Harbour between Msida Creek and Gżira, a locality of about 2,650 residents — one of the smallest in Malta, and one where foreign nationals now slightly outnumber Maltese ones. The whole place is essentially one seafront street bending around a promontory, with a few blocks of villas behind it and a wall of masts on the water in front. Because the headland faces almost due east across the harbour, the view from the Ta' Xbiex waterfront takes in Floriana's bastions, the Valletta skyline and, further round, Manoel Island — the best angle on the harbour that does not require standing in Valletta itself.

Where the name comes from. Two explanations compete. One derives it from tbexbex, the Maltese verb describing the first breaking of daylight, on the grounds that the headland faces the rising sun. The other traces it to xbiek, fishing nets, which suits a shore whose inhabitants worked the harbour long before anyone thought of yachts. The local coat of arms takes the second reading and carries a ship's wheel. Whichever is right, the maritime association has never lapsed: through the 1950s Royal Navy warships lay in the Msida and Ta' Xbiex creek, and from the 1960s onward the same water filled up with private boats instead.

A town of embassies. Ta' Xbiex has an oddly diplomatic character for a place this size. Its interwar villas and mansion blocks house a concentration of foreign missions, most conspicuously Whitehall Mansions, which today accommodates several embassies together with the British High Commission and which in the 1950s served as accommodation for the Women's Royal Naval Service — known then, inevitably, as the Wrennery. Embassy Road is named for the phenomenon. Among the original villas facing the water are Villa Oxania, home of Sir Themistocles Zammit (1864–1935), the physician and archaeologist who excavated the Ħal Saflieni Hypogeum and Tarxien, and Villa Cloe, where Sir Arturo Mercieca (1878–1969), long-serving Chief Justice, lived. Both men died in the locality. Law firms, insurers and auditors have taken over much of the rest.

The harbour and the sailing. Ta' Xbiex is Malta's yachting address. The Royal Malta Yacht Club, whose origins reach back to the nineteenth century, occupies premises on the seafront rebuilt in 2008 and runs a marina of around 65 berths alongside them; the club organises the Rolex Middle Sea Race, the 606-nautical-mile circuit of Sicily and its outlying islands that starts and finishes in Grand Harbour each October and is one of the classic offshore events in the Mediterranean calendar. Adjoining it, the Msida and Ta' Xbiex yacht marina holds roughly 720 berths. The location is prized for shelter: the headland and the surrounding creeks block the prevailing northwesterlies, and the harbour breakwater takes the sting out of a northeasterly swell. A cluster of marine services — riggers, chandlers, brokers — works out of the same few streets.

Church and street names. The parish church of St John of the Cross was raised to parish status in 1969 and is run by Carmelites. Its interior, arranged on Roman basilican lines, is dominated by a steel crucifix 4.2 metres high and 2.4 metres wide, installed in 1971 and based on the small sketch of the Crucifixion drawn by St John of the Cross himself — an unusual silhouette design executed at a scale that has few if any parallels. The street names read like a roll call of the Maltese twentieth century: Sir Temi Zammit Avenue, Enrico Mizzi Street, Sir Ugo Mifsud Street, Sir Augustus Bartolo Street, Abate Rigord Street.

Getting there and using it. Buses on the Valletta–Sliema corridor stop on the seafront, and Ta' Xbiex is a fifteen-minute walk from Msida and about twenty-five from the Sliema ferries. The seafront forms part of the continuous promenade that runs from Pietà all the way to St Julian's, roughly six kilometres of level, unbroken waterside pavement and one of the most heavily used running routes in the country — flat, with harbour views for the whole distance. There is no swimming here. Restaurants along the water cater largely to the boating community and open onto views of the Floriana and Valletta ramparts. Spring and autumn are best; October brings the Middle Sea Race fleet and fills every berth in the creek.