6 Best Sights in Vittoriosa, Senglea, and Cospicua, Malta

Vittoriosa's headland has always been hot property. Before 1530, when the Knights of the Order of St. John first landed and set up base here, it had been home to castles and temples dating from the Phoenecian era. When the Knights were later ousted in 1798, it became HQ for Napoleon's invading French army, and then later the British Navy—it was the last piece of Malta to be handed over by the Brits, who retained a naval base here 15 years after independence was declared in 1964. Today's layout owes much to its strengthening in 1690 by the engineer Don Carlos de Grunenberg. So successful was his design that, some 250 years later, it was able to withstand 69 direct hits by World War II bombers. Nazi propaganda even famously claimed it had "sunk HMS St Angelo" (as the fort was then known by the British) despite it not being a ship. But its starring moment was during the Great Siege of 1565, when it repelled wave after wave of Ottoman Turks over three long, hot summer months. Following extensive renovations, completed in 2016, it reopened as a museum, narrating tales of wartime heroics and ghosts, all woven through a series of thrilling rooms and interactive exhibits spanning its long history.

Lying just to the east of Vittoriosa, this late 19th-century fort was built by the British to hold the world's largest muzzle-loading cannon, the 100-ton Armstrong gun. Exhibitions focus on the daily life of the Victorian British garrison that was stationed here, with live demonstrations and a firing of the cannon at noon. Guided tours (2–4 pm) include re-enactments and a film about the Victorian army, while free audio guides take you through a 3,000-strong collection of weaponry, uniforms, and equipment.

There's no shortage of museums unraveling Malta's military history, but few are as intimate. Housed inside an 18th-century army barracks and labyrinthine, rock-cut, underground air-raid shelter, it focuses on the period from 1940 to 1943, when World War II and the Blitz came to Malta—then a strategically vital outpost for the Allied Forces and stepping stone to Fascist Italy. Through artifacts, newsreels, and a stirring propaganda documentary, narrated by Laurence Olivier and released by King George VI in January 1943 to pluck up the spirits of his battered Maltese subjects, it shows daily life as the bombs fell and hope was all but lost and then found again.

Housed in what used to be the British Navy's bakery, this comprehensive museum views the history of the islands through a nautical gaze, from its first settlers up to the British handover. It's particularly good on the history of the Knights of St. John, who legitimized "piracy" upon their arrival by enabling corsairs to sail under the Spanish flag—and taking a hefty cut of their booty. Tales of feared ships like the Santa Maria—which carried the Knight's treasures to Malta when they were ousted from Rhodes and which met its end when an errant ship-hand mishandled some gunpowder—refreshingly reveal both calamities and heroics. A vast, almost overwhelming, collection includes models of a caracca (galleon), prostitute licenses, Roman amphoras hauled up from shipwrecks, cannons, and all variety of maritime ephemera.