For the place
The Phoenicia Malta
Floriana · Malta
The Phoenicia opened in 1947 as the island's first hotel built to receive the world, and it still holds the ground where Valletta narrows to its land gate: a low limestone building with its name cut over the door and a red carpet down the steps. What sets it apart is behind it. Seven acres of private garden, rare on an island this crowded, fall in terraces from the entrance towards the water, and at the bottom the Bastion Pool sits hard against a wall the Knights of St John raised in the sixteenth century, honey-coloured stone on one side, Marsamxett Harbour and the Sliema skyline on the other. The rooms read as a careful update of the period, botanical headboards and proper beds; ask for one over the harbour or the gardens rather than the city road.
Contessa is the main room, Mediterranean cooking under a glazed conservatory roof that opens onto a terrace facing the bastion, which is where we would sit. Beefbar has taken a corner of the ground floor for its pared-back steak menu, the Palm Court lounge keeps up the afternoon-tea tradition the hotel has long been known for, and in summer the kitchen follows you down to the Bastion Pool. A working kitchen garden on the grounds supplies part of what lands on the plate, unusual for a hotel this close to a capital and a small point in its favour.
Malta is short on hotels with a real sense of place, and this is the one that has it without straining. The Phoenicia is a large property, 132 rooms, a spa cut into the old fortification, the full machinery of a five-star that also takes weddings and events, and we will not pretend it is a hideaway. What it owns is history and ground no one else on the island can offer: the gardens, the bastion, the harbour, the walk to the gates of Valletta. Keep to the garden and pool side and it quiets right down.
