Description
Underground Valletta presents a unique perspective of Valletta’s history from the ground up. We marvel at the bastions walls, palaces, churches and piazzas that adorn Valletta, this UNESCO World Heritage Site, but it took meticulous planning to support a city that has aspirations to be as splendid as any other early modern city in Europe.
The Underground Valletta complex includes several bell-shaped water cisterns and a colossal reservoir, dug in order to store fresh water for the City’s needs. Built on a peninsula that lacked natural springs, the Knights developed sophisticated systems of water management. The Underground Valletta tour includes a visit to one of the largest and finest reservoirs in Valletta which is the only one of these immense water tanks to be open to the public.
Connecting the cisterns and the reservoir is a complex of shelters dug during World War II. Following the path of the streets above them, these shelters offered effective protection to civilians from the barrage of bombs dropped by the Axis powers in their efforts to grind the Islands into surrender. These shelters allow the modern visitor a glimpse of the conditions their occupants had to live in, as much of the City above was reduced to piles of rubble.
This publication sets Underground Valletta within its geological, social and political context to provide a fresh lens through which to explore the City and the hidden world beneath it. The Underground area included in the tour is a small but representative section of the labyrinth of tunnels and spaces beneath the City.
Edited by Fiona Vella and Godwin Vella
Insight Guide
