Malta: Where to Stay and Accommodations

UPDATED: 2/5/2023

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Where to Stay in Malta

The country of Malta is made up of three islands, two of which are inhabited: mainland Malta and the smaller island of Gozo. We visited both during our week in the country, and based on our experiences and research, here’s what we would recommend for your trip. For our guide book for this trip, we used Lonely Planet Malta and Gozo (available for purchase here).

where to stay on mainland malta

We stayed in the capital city of Valletta and would highly recommend it as a place to stay. Another option is nearby Sliema for those more interested in the nightlife scene and not looking to maximize all of Malta’s glorious history as we were. We would not recommend you stay in a small town or in the suburbs of Valletta. Getting around is more time-consuming than you might expect, smaller areas have fewer restaurants and grocery stores and other conveniences that most travelers are looking for.

Check out the many adorable places you can rent in Valletta here.

Here are some of the reasons why we recommend Valletta:

Valletta is very walkable - great for just exploring the city and its architecture on foot plus you can access multiple museums, St. John’s Co-Cathedral, several well-maintained parks, restaurants, a food market, Fort St. Elmo, and the list goes on. The ruins of the opera house hosts various concerts throughout the year and is located in Valletta, too. One night, we chanced upon an open air opera concert and were able to climb up on the ruins to listen.
You can catch a ferry from Valletta to the Three Cities and Sliema with boat rides of about 5-10 minutes. We didn’t visit Sliema, but on one of the Three Cities peninsula - Birgu - is home to beautiful ancient streets and buildings, Fort St. Angelo, the Inquisitor’s Palace (the only one open to visitors in the world), and more.
As the capital city hub, bus transportation from Valletta is convenient with the main bus terminal housed here.
Valletta is a great home base from which to explore a large portion of the island. A few highlights of our trip that we were able to easily get to from Valletta were the walled city of Mdina, Tarxien Temples, underground Ħal Saflieni Hypogeum, and Marsaxlokk Harbor, which houses the colorful fishing fleet.
Restaurants galore! From Italian pizza cafes to fine dining and anything in between, Valletta has plenty of options for both indoor and outdoor dining.

where to stay on the island of gozo

By staying near Cittadella, we were able to visit it during the day and then also return at night for a totally different experience.

We stayed in the main city of Victoria (also called Rabat) and also feel like this is the best option for others . . . unless you wish to stay along the coast since this city is inland. Gozo is a small island. From the highest part of Victoria - the ramparts of Cittadella, you can turn 360 degrees and literally see all parts of the island surrounding you and the sea beyond. Here’s why we would recommend Victoria to others:

As a Medieval city, at first glance, Victoria feels confusing with a meandering rabbit warren of little adorable streets. That ends as soon as you realize just how small the city actually is. And then the fun begins as you wander up and down streets taking in the ancient feel of the place.
The heart of historical architecture in the area is the Cittadella, the hilltop walled fortress that was the original major city before the Medieval suburbs of Victoria grew up. Cittadella is located right in the old part of Victoria and getting to it is easily walkable from the city.
In addition to being a fun walled city to explore during the day and at night, Cittadella houses multiple museums, a cathedral, and epic views of the surrounding countryside.
As the central city on Gozo, Victoria is also the hub for the bus transportation. This means that it is easy to catch a bus from Victoria’s easily accessible bus terminal to anywhere else you would want to go on the island. In our case, we visited Xlendi Bay for a seaside lunch before hiking across a Roman footbridge and along the white cliffs overlooking the Mediterranean Sea.
Maldonado Bistro is there! We ate dinner at this restaurant both nights of our visit and couldn’t recommend it highly enough from the quality and complexity of the menu itself to the ambiance and service. To be honest, there were not a lot of great restaurant options in Victoria based on recommendations from others and online reviews, but this spot was a gem.

Accommodations in Malta

To have a more authentic experience, we stayed in Airbnbs on this trip. Some of the more touristy areas do have resort-type hotels that may appeal to other travelers, but in general Malta is a low-key destination without a huge infrastructure of endless hotels.

It is important to note that air conditioning in Malta is not necessarily standard, and the country gets quite hot during the summer. Make sure you know if the place you’re staying in has air conditioning depending on the time of year you visit. We were there in late September and needed to use the air more often than not. The A/C units are also the type that are added to specific rooms and can be turned on and off via a remote (at least in our experience). This is not the same as central air conditioning like what we’re used to in the US.

We had a great stay at our Airbnb in Valletta, which you can view here. It was centrally and conveniently located, had nice touches from the owner upon arrival, and had two patios plus a rooftop deck. The apartment spanned two floors of a building with an elevator up from the street level. On the first level (which I think was the building’s 4th floor) were two bedrooms and a full bathroom. Up a spiral staircase, the upper floor held the kitchen, dining, and family area with a patio out either side. Up a few steps on the spiral staircase was a half bath perched above the stairs, and then there was a ladder that climbed up from the stairs to the rooftop patio. If it isn’t self-evident, there is nothing accessible about this apartment for anyone with limited mobility or children or, frankly, afraid of heights.

I’m afraid the rest of this blog might sound a bit like complaining, which it is partially, but it’s also to bring to life a bit of the buyer-beware guidance we would provide to others planning on visiting to ensure you have the experience you want. Our approach is to link to places we enjoy and recommend so that others can find them but not to link to those we wouldn’t recommend since our goal is not to harm any businesses or property owners based on what could be a one-time experience. We do always leave reviews via Airbnbs so in that way provide feedback to the owner and to potential renters.

Our other accommodations were less stellar. The location of our two-night stay in Victoria, Gozo, had potential and had positive reviews leading up to when we booked about 9 months in advance; however, no one else reviewed it before our stay, so we learned a lesson there. The place was several hundred years old, huge, and was a traditional style house in town. The location was wonderful, but when we walked in, we were greeted by a strong musty smell overlayed with Raid (the cockroach spray). The smell was so strong that we immediately secluded ourselves upstairs and spent basically no time in the home except when we were sleeping. The smell had not dissipated by the time we checked out, and we did see a large cockroach living in the kitchen in defiance of the spray. The owner was very communicative and friendly, and we really wanted to like this place.

Our final stay was one night near the airport, which served its purpose of being convenient to the airport, which we could walk to from the apartment. It was large, had a number of modern upgrades, and a small number of repair issues. Namely, the shower head was broken so we had to hold it, and the drain tried to suck the shower curtain down so it was a bit of contortionist experience trying to hold the shower curtain away, handle the shower head, and actually wash. For one night, it was totally fine, but if we had stayed there longer, this would not have been fun. Add to the mix the poor communication from the owner who did not respond to us with check-in details until the day before in spite of us contacting him over a week in advance.

in summary: accommodations in malta

Do your homework and then double-check it when you’re booking Airbnbs if our experiences are in any way representative. That said, I am still glad we stayed in Airbnbs since we had the opportunity to stay in locations that otherwise would not have been available to us!

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