Ħaġar Qim and the Three Cities

We started the day at 9 am by driving to the Blue Grotto Overlook in the Babu Valley.

The Maltese rock-centaury is the national plant of Malta.

Then we drove to the UNESCO World Heritage Site Ħaġar Qim. This was built during the Temple Period.

We watched the five minute video in the vistor’s center that gave some background on the building of the temple, then we went out to see it for ourselves.

Ħaġar Qim is a little ways in from the coast, but the coast is visible. The island of Filfla that we saw yesterday ago at the overlook is visible from Ħaġar Qim, and there seems to be a window in the temple to view the island from inside. We have no idea what the significance of this is.

There are “rooms” inside the temple, and doorways between the rooms.

The room that has visibility to Filfla had four statues of the Fat Lady in it. These statues may not actually be female, but it’s assumed that they are some type of fertility god/goddess.

It also has two of these tables.

There is a second temple a quarter mile away Mnajdra, but we didn’t have time to visit it. I visited both of these sites in March 2014.

After leaving, we drove to Birgu which is an old fortified town, older than Valletta. There are three cities, the other two are Cospicua and Senglea.

The executioner’s house was right next to the back door into the prison.

There were a number of First Communions in the churches today, and the bells were ringing.

We visited an old home that has been restored.

Frederica sang in the living room of the the old stone house. She likes the acoustics there.

Lunch was fairly close to Collegiate Church of St Lawrence, so we went to look inside after lunch.

There are many graves on the floor. Some have complex marble inlays in them. Many have the writing worn enough from being walked on to make it unreadable.

Then a gondola ride over to Valletta. They only use the oars for docking, there is a small outboard motor for the trip.

We walked up through the Victoria Gate.

We had some time, so we visited the Grandmaster’s Palace.

Jean Valletta’s major achievement in the Order was defending Malta from the Ottoman Siege of Malta. It led him to found Valletta as a more defensible city.

Then we visited the Church of St. Paul’s Shipwreck Church. We were disappointed that we didn’t see anything related to St. Paul inside.