Mdina Cathedral

Mdina Cathedral tickets: which one to buy

One ticket covers the cathedral and the cathedral museum across the square, which holds Duerer woodcuts, coins and the chapter archives; buying them separately is not possible and the combination is good value. Audio guides are included in most versions. Guided tours of Mdina include the cathedral and cost several times the entry; the silent city is small enough that a guide is a luxury rather than a necessity.

Horse-drawn carriages wait at the gate and charge a fixed rate for a circuit of the walls. Mdina is thirty minutes from Valletta by bus and the old town is closed to traffic, so everyone walks in through the main gate. Queues are short. The cathedral closes to visitors on Sunday mornings and during weddings, which are frequent in summer. The museum keeps its own entrance on Archbishop Square and the ticket is checked at both doors, so keep it with you.

Visiting Mdina Cathedral: what to see

Tradition places the house of Publius, the Roman governor who received St Paul after his shipwreck in 60 AD, on this site, and the cathedral has stood here since at least the twelfth century. The 1693 Sicily earthquake wrecked the medieval building and Lorenzo Gafa, the finest Maltese architect of the baroque, rebuilt it between 1696 and 1705; it is considered his masterpiece and its dome is visible from most of the island. The floor is paved with polychrome marble tomb slabs of bishops and canons, in the same manner as St John's in Valletta.

A fresco of the shipwreck of St Paul fills the apse. Two paintings survived the earthquake: a Madonna attributed to a Byzantine hand and a large panel of St Paul by Mattia Preti. The Norman doors of the sacristy came from the earlier cathedral. The cathedral's two clocks show different times, one the hour and the other the date, a Maltese convention said to confuse the devil. The cathedral chapter still meets in the building opposite, and its archive holds documents going back to the fifteenth century, some of them displayed in the museum.

Mdina Cathedral opening hours and the best time to go

Open Monday to Saturday from mid-morning to late afternoon and closed to visitors on Sunday mornings; last admission is half an hour before closing. Mdina is quiet in the morning and busy in the middle of the day when coach groups arrive, and it empties completely in the evening, which is when it earns the nickname silent city. Malta is hot from June to September and the narrow lanes hold shade.

The cathedral interior is cool. Dress code is enforced, shoulders and knees covered. Photography without flash is allowed. Allow an hour for cathedral and museum. The bastion walls at the north end of the town give a view across half of Malta and cost nothing. Rabat, immediately outside the walls, has the catacombs of St Paul and St Agatha and is a five-minute walk.