Malta’s Unhappy Visitors

J.M.W. Turner’s watercolor of Malta’s Grand Harbor.
Wikimedia Commons.
Calypso’s Cave

Where the eponymous nymph is said to have waylaid Odysseus for seven years. Homer describes the cave and its environs in Book V of the Odyssey:

A deep wood grew outside, with summer leaves

of alder and black poplar, pungent cypress.

Ornate birds here rested their stretched wings—

horned owls, falcons, cormorants—long-tongued

beachcombing birds, and followers of the sea.

Around the smoothwalled cave a crooking vine

held purple clusters under ply of green;

and four springs, bubbling up near one another

shallow and clear, took channels here and there

through beds of violets and tender parsley.

Even a god who found this place

would gaze, and feel his heart beat with delight …

—Book V, lines 69-80, as translated by Robert Fitzgerald.
Photograph by John Swansburg.
Calypso’s Cave is off limits to tourists

Who tend to be less wily than the Ithacan hero.

Photograph by John Swansburg.
A sign advertising apartments for rent adjacent to Calypso’s Cave.

The view from the cave is breathtaking, but the real estate appears about as popular today as it was in the post-Trojan War era.
Photograph by John Swansburg.
The original location of Caravaggio’s portrait of St. Jerome.

In Italy’s chapel in the Co-Cathedral of St. John. The painting now resides in the church’s oratory. It is one of two studies of Jerome that Caravaggio made.

Photograph by John Swansburg.
The portrait of St. Jerome that Caravaggio painted during his stay on Malta.
Wikimedia Commons.
Caravaggio’s portrait of Alof de Wignacourt.

Wikimedia Commons.
Caravaggio’s “Beheading of St. John.”

The artist signed his name in blood, the only time he signed one of his paintings.

Wikimedia Commons.
A Maltese cross carved into the wall of the Old Prison on Gozo, in use from the 16^th century through the beginning of the 20^th.
Photograph by Happy Menocal.
A ship carved into the wall of the Old Prison.
Photograph by Happy Menocal.
A Maltese fishing boat.
Photograph by John Swansburg.
The Maltese love a frozen novelty.

Here a truck delivers Mezzan brand treats. We grew fond of their ice cream cones, which resemble the King Cone or Drumstick known to Americans. The Mezzan slogan, “spoilt for choice,” probably wouldn’t fly here.
Photograph by Happy Menocal.
The Teatru Manoel in Valletta

Where we spent our last evening in Malta, listening to an orchestra from Rotterdam play the work of the Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich.

Return to the article, "Malta: 10 Days, 6,000 Years of History"
Courtesy of the Malta Tourism Authority.