The Knights Hospitaller & the Great Siege
The golden age of Malta began in 1530 when Emperor Charles V granted the islands to the Sovereign Military Order of the Hospital of Jerusalem (Knights Hospitaller, Knights of Malta) as a fief — for the symbolic annual rent of a Maltese falcon.
The Knights Arrive (1530)
The Knights Hospitaller were a military-religious order that had defended the Holy Land since the Crusades and then Rhodes. After being expelled from Rhodes by the Ottomans (1522), they were homeless — until Malta was offered to them. The knights transformed the islands into one of the most heavily fortified regions in the world.
The Great Siege (1565)
On May 18, 1565, 40,000 Ottoman soldiers under Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent landed on Malta to destroy the knights. The defenders: 8,000 men — 500 knights, 4,000 Maltese soldiers, and Spanish mercenaries. What followed was one of the most epic sieges in military history.
For four months, the defenders held out. Fort St. Elmo fell after 31 days of heroic resistance — the Ottomans lost 8,000 men for a small fortress. Grand Master Jean de Valette personally fought on the walls of Birgu (Vittoriosa). On September 8, a Sicilian relief force arrived, and the exhausted Ottomans withdrew. Malta had repelled the onslaught of the world's most powerful empire — and became famous overnight throughout Europe.
Valletta is Built (1566–1571)
Immediately after the siege, Grand Master Jean de Valette began constructing a new, impregnable fortress city on the Sciberras peninsula: Valletta, "the city built by gentlemen for gentlemen." Europe's best military engineers planned the city on the drawing board — a grid of streets flanked by bastions and a deep moat. In just five years, the basic structure was completed. The knights ruled Malta for another 230 years, leaving behind palaces, churches, fortifications, and the Co-Cathedral as their masterpieces.
