Visit to Malta (1): introduction
Since 2006, my sister Silvia (two years younger) and I have established an annual tradition of taking a short holiday together without our spouses. For our eighth such venture, we have chosen the island of Malta – somewhere neither of us has been before (for me, this is my 66th country). It is a short, organised tour with Voyages Jules Verne.
The strategic location of the seven islands in the middle of the Mediterranean means that Malta has been invaded over and over again throughout its history. The Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Romans, Moorish, Normans, Sicilians, Habsburg Spain, Knights of St. John, French and the British (for almost two centuries), have all successively ruled the islands.
Malta gained independence from the United Kingdom in 1964. Today It is a nation of just 410,000, the smallest state in the European Union, which it joined in 2004, and one of the smallest and most densely populated countries in the world. The native language is called Malti and most linguists consider this to be related to the Arabic dialects of western North Africa.