Mdina Cathedral

Where it sits. The cathedral fills the eastern side of St Paul's Square, the one genuinely open space inside Mdina's walls, about three minutes' walk along Villegaignon Street from the main gate. Its dome and twin clock towers are the landmark of the whole plateau, visible from the Rabat approach roads, from Mtarfa's ridge and, on clear days, from as far as Sliema. The square in front is deliberately generous — a Baroque stage set framed by the seminary on one side and the bishop's palace on the other — and the low sun of late afternoon throws the facade's pilasters into sharp relief, which is when photographers gather.

The story behind it. Local tradition puts the church on the site of the house of Publius, the Roman official whom Acts names as receiving Paul after the shipwreck of about AD 60 and who is venerated as Malta's first bishop. A cathedral certainly stood here in the Norman period, and the medieval building survived, much altered, until the earthquake of 11 January 1693 — the same shock that levelled Noto and Catania in Sicily — brought down its nave and roof. The chapter turned to Lorenzo Gafà, the Maltese architect who had just designed the cathedral in Gozo, and the present church was built between 1696 and 1705. Gafà worked fast and with unusual discipline, and the result is the most coherent piece of Maltese Baroque outside Valletta.

What survived the earthquake. Two things from the older church were kept and are still there. The apse retains Mattia Preti's fresco of the Shipwreck of St Paul, painted in the 1680s and left standing when the rest came down, so the new choir was built around it. The sacristy door, a carved wooden panel from the medieval cathedral, was salvaged from the rubble and reinstalled; it is the one piece of joinery in the building older than the seventeenth century. Preti is present elsewhere too, in the altarpiece of the Conversion of St Paul and in the vault paintings, and the floor follows the Maltese convention of inlaid polychrome marble tomb slabs — here commemorating bishops and canons rather than the knights honoured in St John's.

The two clocks. The facade carries a clock on each of its flanking towers. One tells the time; the other shows the day and the month. Guides invariably explain the arrangement as a device to confuse the devil about the hour of Mass, which is folklore rather than record, but the pairing is unusual and worth looking up for. Above them the dome sits on a drum ringed by paired pilasters, and the whole front is built of globigerina limestone that has weathered from cream to a deep ochre on the exposed western face.

Inside. The plan is an irregular Latin cross with a shallow transept, sized for a chapter rather than a crowd, and the sense on entering is of height and restraint rather than the gilt overload of Valletta. Side chapels along the aisles belong to the noble families of Mdina and carry their arms. The silver processional cross in the treasury is traditionally said to have come with the Order from Rhodes in 1530, and the choir stalls, the organ case and the marble baptismal font are all worth a slow circuit. The chapter's archive, one of the oldest continuous document collections on the islands, is held in the museum opposite and includes charters, notarial deeds and music manuscripts going back to the fifteenth century.

Cathedral status and the museum. Malta's diocese has been seated here since the Middle Ages. When St John's in Valletta was raised to co-cathedral in 1816 the two churches became formal equals, and the archbishop's throne exists in both. Immediately across the square, the Cathedral Museum occupies the former seminary, a monumental 1730s building by Andrea Belli. Its holdings are stronger than the setting suggests: a substantial collection of Albrecht Dürer woodcuts and engravings, alongside silver, illuminated choirbooks, coins struck for the Order and further paintings by Preti. The museum charges separately from the church, and a combined ticket is usually available.

Getting there and timing. Enter Mdina at the main gate and keep straight on; the square opens on the right. The cathedral is open to visitors on most weekdays and Saturday mornings, with a fee that also supports the fabric, and closes to sightseeing during services — the Sunday morning schedule and the 10 February feast of the Shipwreck of St Paul take precedence. Shoulders and knees should be covered. There is a step at the west door and the nave floor is uneven marble, so wheelchair access is possible but not simple. Fifteen minutes covers a quick look; an hour is closer to what the Preti paintings and the tomb slabs deserve, and the museum needs another hour on top of that.