Fort Manoel

Listen first. Water slaps softly against the rocks below, and halyards tap against the masts of the yachts moored in the harbour. Under your feet, the ground is pale limestone, warm in the sun and dusted with fine grit. Across the narrow channel, the domes and bastions of Valletta rise from the water like a stage set. You are on Manoel Island, a low finger of rock off the Gżira waterfront. At its centre stands a square stone fortress, Fort Manoel.

The fort takes its name from a Portuguese nobleman, António Manoel de Vilhena. He was Grand Master of the Order of Saint John, the military religious order of knights that ruled Malta for more than two centuries. The knights had good reason to be nervous about this island. Marsamxett Harbour sits right beside Valletta. An enemy fleet anchored here could bombard the capital at close range. Building a fort on this small island would close that door.

Work began in the 1720s, under Vilhena's rule. The design is linked to French military engineers who served the Order. One of them, Charles François de Mondion, is closely tied to the project. He is said to rest in a crypt beneath the fort itself. It is an unusual fate for an engineer, to be buried inside the walls he helped to draw. Construction took decades. The fort was finished around the middle of the eighteenth century.

Look at the shape of the walls. Fort Manoel follows the ideas of the bastioned fortress, a style that spread across Europe in the age of gunpowder. Instead of tall, thin medieval towers, the walls are low and thick. Arrow-shaped bastions push out at each corner. From those points, defenders could fire along the face of every wall, so no attacker could hide at its base. A dry ditch runs around the outside. Everything is geometry, built to deflect cannonballs.

The stone is Maltese limestone, the same honey-coloured rock you see all over the islands. It is soft when first cut, which made the knights' ambitious building programme possible. It hardens as it weathers. But it is also vulnerable. Salt, wind and rain eat into it slowly. Up close, you can see surfaces pitted and rounded by sea air, beside crisp, newer blocks from restoration work. The difference in texture is easy to spot once you know to look for it.

Inside, the fort opens onto a wide parade ground, lined with barrack blocks and arcades. Here is a surprise many visitors only learn later. This square appeared on television screens around the world. In the first season of Game of Thrones, it was used for the scene of Ned Stark's execution, outside the Great Sept of Baelor. Fans sometimes stand in the courtyard and try to match the arches to the frames they remember.

At the heart of the parade ground stood a chapel dedicated to Saint Anthony of Padua. Vilhena also had a bronze statue of himself placed in the fort. That statue was later moved and now stands in Floriana, the suburb just outside Valletta's walls. So if you cross the harbour later today, you might meet the Grand Master again, a short walk from the capital's gates.

When Britain took control of Malta in the early nineteenth century, the fort stayed in military use. During the Second World War, the harbour area around Valletta became one of the most heavily bombed places in Europe. Fort Manoel did not escape. The chapel was badly damaged in air raids in 1942. Later, it was rebuilt. When you look at it today, you are seeing a reconstruction of something that was almost lost.

After the military left in the second half of the twentieth century, the fort faced a quieter enemy... neglect. For years, it stood empty. Vandals stripped it, and weeds pushed through the paving. Then, from the early 2000s, a major restoration began as part of a wider development of Manoel Island and nearby Tigné Point. Masons replaced damaged stone, and the chapel and courtyard returned to something close to their old dignity.

The fort is not the only story on this island. Close by stands the Lazzaretto, a quarantine hospital. For centuries, ships arriving in Malta could be held here, so that plague and other diseases would not reach the towns. Sailors, merchants and travellers waited out their days behind its walls. The English poet Lord Byron is recorded as one of those travellers held in quarantine on Manoel Island. By most accounts, he did not enjoy the experience.

Now turn and face the water. The view from the fort's edge explains everything about why it was built. Valletta's skyline fills the far shore, with the dome of the Carmelite church and the spire of Saint Paul's Anglican cathedral rising above the bastions. To your left, the apartment towers of Sliema climb along the shore. Gunners once watched this same channel for hostile sails. Today, the boats are ferries, fishing craft and white yachts.

At the bridge that connects the island to Gżira, you may notice a small colony of ducks and other birds, living among little huts and painted shelters on the shore. Locals have looked after them for years, and families stop to watch them. It is a gentle contrast to the cannon walls just behind. Along the Gżira promenade, joggers pass, old men talk on benches, and the smell of coffee drifts from the cafés.

Before you leave, pause where you are. Touch the stone if you can. It is the same rock the knights' masons cut almost three hundred years ago, shaped to stop iron shot. It has survived bombs, abandonment and salt wind. Notice how quiet it is, here on the edge of a crowded harbour. As you walk back toward the bridge, glance over your shoulder. The fort will sink low behind the trees, exactly as its builders intended.