Valletta

Valletta fits onto a peninsula of barely one square kilometre and is still the densest concentration of baroque architecture in the Mediterranean. The Knights of St John laid the city out on a grid after the Great Siege of 1565, with bastions facing the Grand Harbour. Walk down Republic Street from the city gate and you reach the far end in twenty minutes — passing St John’s Co-Cathedral with Caravaggio’s „Beheading of Saint John the Baptist", the Grandmaster’s Palace and the Upper Barrakka Gardens with their view across the Three Cities.