Map of Malta

The Maltese archipelago sits in the middle of the Mediterranean, about fifty miles south of Sicily and less than two hundred miles from the coast of North Africa. It is tiny: the three inhabited islands of Malta, Gozo and Comino, along with a handful of uninhabited islets like Filfla and the St Paul’s Islands, add up to barely more than a hundred square miles. During the Ice Ages, when the sea was far lower, the islands were joined to Sicily, and the fossils of dwarf elephants and hippopotamuses found in the cave of Għar Dalam are relics of animals that wandered south and were stranded when the waters rose.

The islands are built almost entirely of layers of limestone and clay laid down on an ancient sea floor, and the whole block is tilted. In the southwest, the land ends in sheer cliffs, like the Dingli Cliffs, that drop more than 750 feet into the sea. In the northeast, it slopes gently down into long, deep inlets like the Grand Harbour, some of the finest natural harbors in the Mediterranean, which is why whoever held the sea wanted to hold Malta. The soft, honey-colored globigerina limestone is easy to carve, and nearly every building on the islands, from Neolithic temples to the Baroque city of Valletta, is made from it. With no rivers or lakes and very little rain, the Maltese have always farmed in small fields walled with dry stone, catching whatever soil and water they can.

That position, at the crossroads of Europe, Africa and the Middle East, has shaped everything about Malta, from its history to its food. Phoenicians, Romans, Arabs, Normans, the Knights of St John and the British all left their mark, and the Maltese language itself is a Semitic language written in the Latin alphabet. Gozo, the greener and quieter sister island, is home to the Gġantija temples, among the oldest freestanding stone buildings in the world. I explored how all of these influences come together at the table, in cheeses like the little ġbejna, in my notes on Maltese food history and on Gozo.