A baroque fortress city on the Grand Harbour
Valletta was built by the Knights of St John after the Great Siege of 1565, and its grid of honey-coloured streets and bastions barely fits on its peninsula. St John's Co-Cathedral looks plain outside but is lavishly gilded inside, and holds two paintings by Caravaggio. Watch the noon gun from the Upper Barrakka Gardens, take a traditional dghajsa boat across to the Three Cities, and eat pastizzi and rabbit stew, Malta's national dish.