Travel: Malta for the ages

The bay was decorated with Malta's trademark luzzu fishing boats as a chilly spring breeze floated in off the Mediterranean. The tiny craft in an electric rainbow of colors -- each with the traditional Eye of Osiris peering from the bows -- bobbed along the half-moon of the shore and for hundreds of yards into the bay.

On many boats, fishermen sat in the morning sun mending nets after a night at sea, as Malta's fishermen have done for centuries.

Along the arc of the waterfront in the town of Marsaxlokk, the market was already in full swing. It had started before dawn and would be gone by the early afternoon. Stalls under red, white and blue plastic tarps stretched two-deep, offering fresh seafood brought in by those luzzu (LOOT-sue) that morning. Mongers sliced the catch and sang the praises of their fish, eels, octopus and prawns. The waterfront restaurants were already crowded, and the scent of the sea was everywhere.

Buyers have met sellers along Marsaxlokk's waterfront every day in a tradition that goes back who-knows-how-long on these islands.

"We try to get there early. Otherwise, you don't get the best fish," Malta native Trevor Westacott had told me a few days earlier.

As my wife and I worked our way through the market, I sensed a country with a foot far in the past, inching the other toward the future. And I thought, not for the first time in our week here, that if geography were fair, the three-island Republic of Malta would be a much bigger country.

Its 7,000 years of history and tradition are crammed into an area about the size of Minneapolis and St. Paul. Its location -- 90 miles off the toe of Italy and 150 off the shoulder of North Africa -- has made it a cultural bridge. Nearly every army or merchant culture that has floated through this part of the Mediterranean has snagged on Malta's shores. Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Romans, Arabs, Normans, French, Ottomans, Spanish, Sicilians and British all have left their marks.

All this makes Malta a mid-Mediterranean time machine.

We used Malta's mass-transit system -- itself a blast-from-the-past fleet of bright yellow, chugging, mostly 1950s-era British buses -- to get around the pint-sized republic. Usually, we climbed aboard in front of our sleek 21st-century hotel in Sliema, a resort town across Marsamxett Harbor from the ramparts of Valletta, Malta's Lilliputian fortress of a capital city.

Sometimes, we got off in the 16th century. Other times, in the 12th.

Stepping back in time

Vittoriosa spills from the clifftops down narrow, winding streets to Malta's Grand Harbor, one of many fingers of water that chop up the coastline.

Once, during an aimless ramble, we found ourselves standing by a building on the waterfront that had been the knights' hospital during the siege. Today, the building is occupied by nuns, and gauzy curtains fluttered from an open window two stories above. A simple crucifix hung on the wall.

If Vittoriosa and other Maltese towns reward aimless wandering, Valletta practically demands it.

Most of the bus routes on Malta begin and end right outside Valletta's city gate and we never needed much of an excuse to stroll the town before changing buses.

Inside the city gates, near kiosks and tables of fresh-baked goods on the main street, stands a 16th-century palace. Opposite that lie a few broken columns and the other remains of the Royal Opera House. The building, constructed in 1860, was destroyed in 1942 in what the Maltese call the second great siege. During World War II, Malta, then controlled by the British, sat astride the supply lines for Germany's Afrika Korps. For 154 days and nights, German and Italian bombers pounded the islands.

Reminders of Malta's role in the war include the Lascaris War Rooms. The rooms were dug into the rock under Valletta and allowed the British and Maltese to continue the war from below while Germany dropped bombs from above.

From the outside, the church could pass for a post office or modest courthouse. But inside, St. John's soars, adorned with gold, sculptures, jewels and paintings. Colorful stones mark knightly tombs in the floor and gold seems to panel some walls, as each nationality of knights tried to outdo the others in lavishing treasures on the cathedral.

St. John's is just one of hundreds of churches in Malta -- one for every day of the year, including three cathedrals. Virtually every church and every one of the 400,000 souls in Malta is Roman Catholic. And the knights' emblem, the eight-pointed Maltese cross, appears on everything from wrought-iron fences to jewelry to a porch light on the 13th-century home of a noble family in Mdina, Malta's ancient capital which sits atop a rising plain in the center of the main island.

Diving for Malta history

Malta is one of Europe's premier diving destinations, and I discovered that not all the reminders of Malta's past are ashore.

The HMS Maori, a British destroyer sunk by a German bomb, lies a couple of hundred yards off Valletta and 55 feet below the Mediterranean's surface.

Later in our trip, we headed off to visit other out-of-the-way places: the ancient temple ruins of Hagar Qim (ha-JAR-eem) and Mnajdra (muh-NAZH-druh). These are among a collection of ancient temples scattered across Malta. Some date from as long ago as 6,000 years and mark a time before history. All evoke mystery and awe.

Hagar Qim and Mnajdra hug a cliff, with views far out on the lonely sea.

The rocks of the temples -- some weighing as much as 50 tons -- are carved with intricate designs and patterns. How did a primitive culture organize itself to corral the labor needed to stack and build with such megaliths? And what were the people trying to say?

My wife and I pondered those questions as we sat on some rocks at Mnajdra -- perfect seats on the Malta time machine -- and looked out over the ruins to the sea. It's the same sea the ancients saw. They must have listened in vain, just as we did, to hear the slap of the Mediterranean against the cliff face far below.

We took leave of the ruins and hiked back down the hill to wait for the bus that would take us back to the 21st century, winding the clock in the Malta time machine forward again.