top of page
Search

Gozo’s Citadel: Knights, the 1551 Raid and a Cathedral With a Painted Dome

Writer: Alex van Terheyden
Alex van Terheyden
12 minutes ago
12 min read

As the ferry cuts across the cobalt water from Malta, Gozo rises out of the sea: the second island of the Maltese archipelago, quieter and wilder than its big sister, and older in soul. At its heart, on a hill above the capital, Victoria, stands the Cittadella. People have lived on this rock since the Bronze Age, and for more than 3,000 years it has been a refuge, an acropolis, a castle and a fortress of the Knights of St John. It has also been the scene of the darkest summer in Gozo’s history. If you are planning a wider trip, start with my Malta travel guide, which covers knights, temples, Gozo and the less polished side of the islands too.


This is the sixth of my seven Malta deep-dives. Earlier on Gozo I stood among the stones of Ġgantija, the temple older than Stonehenge, and walked the pilgrim trail of Ta’ Għammar Hill and Ta’ Pinu. This time it is the island’s capital and its citadel: the 1551 raid, an old prison carved with ships, and a cathedral with a dome that is not there at all. Watch the film first, then read on for the history and the practical details.



A rock fortified for 3,000 years


The Cittadella’s story begins long before the walls you see today. According to its Wikipedia entry, pottery shows the hilltop was settled in the Bronze Age, and Bronze Age grain silos found outside the walls in the 19th century suggest the settlement was then larger than the present citadel. Under the Phoenicians and Romans the hill became the acropolis of a town called Gaulos, with a fortified town spreading below it where much of Victoria now stands. A temple to Juno is said to have stood where the cathedral is today, and a 2nd-century Latin inscription was later reused in the citadel’s main gate.


In the Middle Ages the acropolis became a castle. The first reference to the castrum of Gozo dates from 1241; the Genoese sacked it in 1274, and for long periods the island’s people were required to spend the night inside the walls for safety. By the 15th century the citadel was too small, and a suburb grew up below it on the site of the Roman town. That suburb, Rabat, is the historic core of today’s Victoria. When Emperor Charles V handed Malta and Gozo to the Knights of St John in 1530, the Cittadella was still essentially a medieval castle, and that was about to matter enormously.


1551: the summer Gozo was emptied


In July 1551 an Ottoman fleet arrived. Wikipedia’s account of the invasion of Gozo says the force was led by the admiral Sinan Pasha, with the famous corsair Dragut as his lieutenant, and that it appears to have been launched in retaliation for the capture of Mahdia, in modern Tunisia, by Spanish and Hospitaller forces the year before. Some 145 ships carried perhaps 10,000 to 12,000 men. They raided Sicily, landed on Malta, plundered villages and briefly besieged Mdina, then abandoned the main island and crossed to Gozo.


The castle’s defences were obsolete. It was bombarded for two days, and its garrison capitulated on 26 July. The fortress was sacked, and between 5,000 and 7,000 people, most of the island’s population, were enslaved and shipped to North Africa or Constantinople. Families were separated; some captives were later ransomed or freed, others died in slavery, and most never came home. The same fleet went on to take Tripoli from the Knights in August. In the film I call it brutality rather than a battle, and the numbers bear that out: Gozo was left almost empty, and the sources say it took about a century of resettlement for the population to recover.


Gozo survived. Some people escaped or returned, and others came to resettle the island. They rebuilt their homes, reopened their churches, and in time made the island one of the most devout corners of a devout country. Faith here is not decoration. You see it in every niche on every street corner and hear it in every feast day. The Knights learned from 1551 too: they improved the defences of Malta, and those fortifications later played a key role in the Great Siege of 1565, a story I tell in my Valletta post.


Victoria: the capital that is still called Rabat


The ferry leaves you at Mġarr, and from there the road climbs to Victoria, more or less at the centre of the island. The town was renamed on 10 June 1887 for Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee, at the request of the Bishop of Gozo, Pietru Pace, but plenty of Gozitans, especially older ones, still call it Rabat (Wikipedia). In the film I put its population at just over 6,000; the more recent figure is 7,491, as of July 2024. It is small, but it holds the weight of centuries.


I arrived freshly recovered from a nasty bout of food poisoning. I caught it in London, not Malta, so do not let it put you off the pastizzi. This was my first proper walk since, so forgive the pace. Victoria’s streets reward a slow walk anyway. There are market stalls selling hats (I tried one on; it was far too big even for my head), swallows wheeling overhead, and saints in little niches on almost every building. Most of them seem to be St Joseph. Around the corner is St James’ Church, quiet and dignified. Malta and Gozo between them are often said to have more than 360 churches, nearly one for every day of the year.


Then there are the balconies. I used to think Ukraine had the monopoly on mismatched balconies, but Malta does it with more elegance. The enclosed wooden balconies are so iconic that you can buy miniature versions in souvenir shops to hang your keys on. And, because no Wondering Englishman film would be complete without one, there is an obelisk at the foot of the citadel steps.


Inside the walls


Climb the steps from the square and you reach the Cittadella Visitor Centre and the main gate. Look up at the walls on the way and you can read two eras in the stone. After 1551 the Knights eventually rebuilt the southern walls, the side facing Victoria, between 1599 and 1622, turning it into a gunpowder fortress. The northern walls were left alone and still keep a largely medieval form (Wikipedia). Plans to demolish the whole citadel were drawn up more than once in the 17th and 18th centuries but never carried out. The fortress saw brief action during the French invasion and the uprising of 1798, and the British decommissioned it as a military site on 1 April 1868. It has been on Malta’s tentative list for UNESCO World Heritage status since 1998.


Inside, it is a small world of honey-coloured lanes, chapels and museums. The first I stepped into was the Museum of Archaeology. It was modest but very old, and it told Gozo’s story in carved stone and fragments. Since I filmed, things have moved on. Heritage Malta closed the Gozo Museum of Archaeology on 13 April 2026 and has substantially closed the Nature Museum, while it prepares a new, all-encompassing Gozo Museum. The Ċittadella combo ticket now covers the Gran Castello Historic House, the Old Prison and the Visitor Centre, and costs €5 for adults. It was a bargain when I visited, and it still is. One small plea from the film still stands: if your toddler is teething, the museums can wait a year.


Rooftop views and the lookout


The reason anyone fortified this hill is obvious once you reach the walls. Gozo stretches out in every direction: rolling hills, terraced fields, stone villages and the shimmering sea beyond. For centuries this was a lookout, with eyes scanning the horizon for sails that might bring trade or terror. Today it feels peaceful, and the old cannons are not pointed at anything more threatening than the people enjoying a glass of wine below. I promptly joined them.


I filmed this in February, and the weather was perfect. People complain that Malta is too hot in summer; in winter you get blue skies, soft light and walls almost to yourself. I wore a jacket, but only because I was still fragile. On a normal day a T-shirt would have done. Watch your step on the worn stairs as you go around the corners of the bastions.


The Old Prison: ships carved in stone


The highlight for me was the Old Prison. According to Heritage Malta, it is the oldest surviving prison on Gozo and holds the largest known collection of historical graffiti in a single place on the Maltese Islands. It stands beside the Courts of Justice, to which it was originally connected, and was in use from the mid-16th century until the early 20th century. Today there is an entrance hall, once a common cell, and a free-standing block of six individual cells. You have to duck to get into them.


Ships and handprints scratched into the limestone walls of the Old Prison in the Cittadella, Victoria, Gozo

The walls are covered in marks: palm prints, crosses, names, dates, games, human figures and, above all, ships. Heritage Malta notes that some inmates seem to have scratched a record of the length of their stay. I found a name that might be Luigi, dated 1827, and another dated 1868; you learn to tell a prisoner’s deep, patient cut from a tourist’s lighter scratch. Were the ships the vessels they had worked on, or sailed the world on? Were they smugglers, or worse? Either way, these are the dreams of men who wanted to be back on the open sea.


Life inside was not quite as grim as you might expect. A display explains that prisoners did hard labour of up to 12 hours a day, but were fed by the Church on olives, fish, beef, soup and bread. They had to shave once a week and bathed every other day. The prison is older than its graffiti, too. Soon after arriving in Malta, the Knights of St John used it to lock up their own rowdy members, and Heritage Malta’s most famous example is Fra Jean Parisot de La Valette, the future Grand Master and hero of the Great Siege, who spent four months here in 1538 after attacking a man. Not a good look for a knight, but evidently he had time to cool off.


Climb, and your health will improve


Back outside, the cure for a stuffy cell is a climb up the very worn stairs to near the top of the citadel. From there you see all of Gozo, with the sea wrapping round on almost every side. While I stood there the cathedral bells began to ring. It is a beautiful little island, and from up here you understand why every civilisation that came here wanted this hill.


The Cathedral of the Assumption


In the square in front of the cathedral stands a bronze statue of Pope John Paul II, who visited Gozo on 26 May 1990 and concelebrated Mass at Ta’ Pinu (Times of Malta). Behind him rises the Cathedral of the Assumption, perched at the highest point of the citadel. It is majestic but not overwhelming, and there is a humility to it.


The site has been sacred for a very long time. Wikipedia records the tradition of the Roman temple to Juno, followed by churches; the earliest reference to a parish church inside the citadel dates from 1299. That church was sacked in 1551 but reopened by September 1554. After the earthquake of 1693 it was decided to rebuild. The foundation stone of the present church was laid on 21 September 1697 to a design by the Maltese architect Lorenzo Gafà, who also built the cathedral at Mdina. It was inaugurated on 14 August 1711 and became a cathedral when the Diocese of Gozo was created in 1864. The Cathedral Museum still displays a Doric column from the temple of Juno, unearthed from the foundations.


What is most surprising is what is not there. There is no dome, only a masterful illusion. The cathedral’s own history describes a trompe-l’œil created in 1739 on a flat ceiling over the crossing, convincing enough to include a lifelike gecko on one of the painted windowpanes. The Times of Malta credits it to the Sicilian scenographer Antonio Manuele, nicknamed Pippi (the cathedral calls him Antonino Emanuele), and says it is about eight metres across and was restored in 2019. Nobody knows for certain why the real dome was never built; Gafà’s death in 1703 may have been a factor. It is theatre and art, practicality posing as grandeur, and it tells you a lot about this place: limits turned into creativity.


The trompe-l’œil painted dome on the flat ceiling of the Cathedral of the Assumption, Cittadella, Gozo

The aisles are lined with chapels, each with its own altar and its own saint, mystery or need. In the film I pick out St Joseph, St Paul, St Francis, the Immaculate Conception, the Crucifixion and St Anthony. Over the centuries Gozitan families have come to these altars to baptise, to mourn and to give thanks. There is detail everywhere you look: inlaid marble tombstones in the floor, hand-carved confessionals, and altars sheathed in polished stone and gold leaf. It leaves you thoughtful rather than dazzled. It has none of the Caravaggios of St John’s Co-Cathedral in Valletta, but it has some exceptional artwork and is an exceptionally beautiful church.


Tucked behind the church, and easily missed, is the Cathedral Museum. It is the vault of Gozo’s Catholic heritage: vestments as intricate as royal robes, silver chalices and monstrances, handwritten ledgers from the 17th century, missals worn smooth by priests’ hands, paintings by Italian and Maltese artists, processional crosses and reliquaries. The cathedral’s museum guide says it opened in 1979, was renovated in 2021 and spreads over three levels: a silver vault, history and memorabilia, and a picture gallery. Everyday objects such as bells, candles and ceremonial tools sit there too, retired into silence after centuries of Masses and feast days.


To Gozitans this is not just a building. It is woven into baptisms, weddings, funerals, feast days and ordinary Tuesdays. There is no dome and no flourish, yet somehow it soars higher than most cathedrals I have seen.


How to visit the Cittadella


The citadel itself, with its streets and bastions, is free and open at all hours. The Visitor Centre is open from March to December, Tuesday to Sunday, 09:00 to 17:00 (last admission 16:30), and closed on Mondays. In January and February it also closes on Wednesdays. It is closed on 1 January, Good Friday and 24, 25 and 31 December. The Heritage Malta combo ticket (adults €5, concessions €3.50, children 6 to 11 €2.50, valid for 30 days) covers the Visitor Centre, the Old Prison and the Gran Castello Historic House. Card payment is recommended.


The Cathedral, Vestry and Cathedral Museum are separate. Per the cathedral’s tourist information, they are open Monday to Saturday from 09:00 to 17:00 and closed on Sundays. Tickets cost €5 for adults and €3 for seniors, students and children aged 11 and over; under-10s go free. A €7 combination ticket adds the Gozo 360 film. Cover shoulders and knees, and allow two to three hours for the whole hill.


Getting there: the Gozo Channel ferry from Ċirkewwa to Mġarr takes about 25 minutes (fares), and buses from Mġarr run to the Victoria terminus, a short walk from the citadel. Plan routes on Malta Public Transport, or drive and park in Victoria. Details were checked on 23 October 2026; confirm before you go.


Where to stay


I stayed at The Duke Boutique Hotel on Republic Street in Victoria, a few minutes’ walk from the citadel and central for the whole island. Alternatively, compare stays across Gozo on Booking.com Gozo or find an apartment on Airbnb. Use the Malta hotels map below (Stay22 Hub, AID thewonderingenglishman) to weigh up a Gozo base against one on the main island.



Guided tours to Gozo and the Citadel


If you are based on Malta and would rather not drive, most guided Gozo day trips stop at the Cittadella in Victoria. Browse Malta and Gozo tours on Viator or Gozo tours on GetYourGuide, and read the Malta travel guide before you settle the itinerary. Pair the citadel with Ġgantija and Ta’ Pinu for a full Gozo day.



Getting around and staying connected


I book cars through Discover Cars, and if you want a driver waiting at Malta International, book a private transfer with GetTransfer. Ride-hailing apps such as Bolt operate in Malta; my Bolt code HFDHF gets you ride credit. For data, my go-to eSIM is Saily (code Wondering for 15% off); Roamless is another good option (code WONDERING for 20% off). For euros without the bank fees I use Wise. I filmed this walk on the DJI Osmo Pocket 3.


Plan your trip



Flights


Flying to Malta? Compare fares below.



The Wondering Englishman has visited over 90 countries so far, and I'm slowly making my way around the world. There is one more Malta deep-dive to come, out among the mysterious cart ruts, along with plenty more stories from these islands of knights, faith and forgotten civilisations.



Photo credits: cover Citadel in Victoria by PeliCo, CC BY-SA 4.0; Graffiti prison Gozo by G.Mannaerts, CC BY-SA 4.0; Cathedral of the Assumption, Gozo 07 by Joseolgon, CC BY 4.0. All via Wikimedia Commons.


Disclosure: some links on this page are affiliate links, so I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you.


If useful, subscribe to my YouTube Channel. Or SubscribeStar. Or buy me a coffee via Ko-Fi.


Safe travels, The Wondering Englishman

Comments

Donate with PayPal
bottom of page