Malta International Contemporary Art Space occupies a site in Floriana at the restored Ospizio, a 1667 fortress three-quarters of a mile from central Valletta, Malta’s capital city.
Exterior of Malta Contemporary International Art Space with Conrad Shawcross 'Beacons' overlooking Marsamxett Harbour.
The 17th and 21st centuries unite seamlessly, spectacularly, at the Malta International Contemporary Art Space, the country’s first-ever museum dedicated to showing contemporary art.
MICAS occupies a site in Floriana at the restored Ospizio, a 1667 fortress three-quarters of a mile from central Valletta, Malta’s capital city. The sun-drenched, 90,000 square-foot campus opened indoor gallery spaces in October of 2024, with an outdoor sculpture garden and café scheduled to debut in 2026. All front breathtaking Marsamxett Harbour.
Selecting the world’s most striking art museum, or the art museum occupying the most picturesque location, would be impossible, but MICAS is on the list.
Contemporary Art Comes To Malta
Joana Vasconcelos, 'Valkyrie Mumbet,' installed at Malta International Contemporary Art Space. Fran Stivala
Through March 27, 2025, visitors to MICAS are greeted upon entry by Portuguese artist Joana Vasconcelos’ (b. 1971) maximalist Valkyrie Mumbet. Hung from the ceiling, the monumental, bulbous, sprawling, octopus-like fabric installation honors Elizabeth “Mum Bett” Freeman, an enslaved woman whose court battle for her freedom in 1781 helped make slavery illegal in Massachusetts. The piece is part of Vasconcelos’s Valkyries series, named after Norse female war goddesses, paying homage to inspiring women.
Vasconcelos’ Tree of Life may be even more spectacular. Soaring 40 feet from MICAS’ lower level, 110,000 hand-stitched and embroidered fabric leaves, fungi, mosses and lichens, stumps and branches, fill the immense spaciousness of the museum’s raw and restrained interior as if custom made for it. A million sequins and baubles and lights and patterns.
Marsamxett Harbour views as seen through a large, skewed arch known as the ‘arcone’ provide a backdrop for the artwork. The arch is a work of art and feat of engineering itself, one of the finest masonry skewed arches in the world. Each stone was precisely cut and laid to accommodate the twisting, turning structure.
Joana Vasconcelos, 'Tree of Life,' installed at Malta International Contemporary Art Space. Fran Stivala
On MICAS’ upper level, the sculpture, drawings, and one knockout painting by Maltese artist Raymond Pitré (1940–2024) provide a gritty, industrial, screaming contrast to Vasconcelos’ celebratory, vibrant colors. Pitré was a maverick, a vocal advocate for modern and contemporary art in Malta, not always an easy sell in this place, historically steeped as it is in conventional, Catholic sensibilities.
Pitré was an outsider, iconoclastic, religiously devoted to his artwork, but not to the art world or art market. He occupied the edges.
In a video accompanying the exhibition on view through June 29, 2025, Pitré called MICAS “a godsend” for its having finally broken through the wall sequestering Malta from cutting edge contemporary art. The kind of art created by Conrad Shawcross (b. 1977) and displayed across exterior spaces around the museum. His intricate, mesmerizing, metal, light, and shadow sculptures in MICAS’ barrel vaults prove particularly sublime.
Visiting Malta
The rocky, island nation of Malta sits roughly 60 miles south of Sicily in the Mediterranean Sea. It does not sit at the forefront of consciousness for American travelers. Just under 70,000 American tourists visited in 2024, about two-percent of Malta’s total. No non-stop flights connect the U.S. and Malta, contributing to those low visitation numbers. Malta, however, is connected to most major European airports by direct routes, making adding it on to existing Europe itineraries the best way for Americans to visit. Three or four days will suffice.
The Maltese nation consists of numerous islands, the largest of which is called Malta. This is the 10th smallest country in the world, but also one of the most densely populated. You’ve never seen street parking like you’ll see in Valletta–bananas!
View of Valletta, the capital of Malta
Valletta is the smallest capital city among European Union nations, population about 6,000. History buffs and families are best served staying here where narrow streets, churches, ramparts, seawalls, and commanding Mediterranean views recall the perched villages along the French Rivieria or even Venice without the canals.
Valletta is for walking. Unfortunately, with narrow, uneven sidewalks–if you can call them that–and occasionally steep hills and stairs, the destination is not easily accessible for travelers with mobility challenges. That walkability is also challenged June through September when this rock in the middle of the Mediterranean approximates a pizza oven baking under an unrelenting sun. Humid too. Plan your trip for the winter months when temperatures are mild, the sun warm, not withering, and crowds are reduced.
Malta also isn’t big on crosswalks and with cars driving in the opposite direction to those in the States–a holdover from British colonization–tourists on foot need to be alert crossing streets.
Perched atop Valletta’s spectacular St. Barbara Bastion–the city’s most-coveted street for its unobstructed Grand Harbour views–the exquisite Iniala Harbour House boutique luxury hotel occupies four renovated townhouses mere steps from the city center and a mile from MICAS. Those who can afford it would be well advised staying there.
Iniala Harbour House is three blocks from Malta’s top tourist attraction: St. John Co-Cathedral. Built to serve as the church for the Order of the Knights of St. John, the building opened in 1577. Not as large as St. Mark’s Basilica in Venice, St. John’s equals it–equals any church–in gonzo baroque splendor. The wonders inside belie the building’s all together ordinary exterior.
Unimaginably intricate marble tombstones cover the floor. The decorative flourish throughout–carving, gilding, paintings, sculpture, columns–boggles the mind. The ceilings are a fantasy. Remember to look up! The church houses one of the earliest organs in Europe as well as one of its most remarkable altars.
23 Mar 2023. Malta, Valletta. St. John's Co-Cathedral. Interior. Painting by Caravaggio: The Beheading of St. John the Baptist.
The highlights for art lovers, however, are a pair of Caravaggio (1571-1610) paintings produced specifically for the Co-Cathedral, including the only work he ever signed, the monumental The Beheading of St John (1608), on the short list of greatest 17th century paintings. This artwork, along with St. Jerome Writing (1607), were executed by the artist in Malta while on the lam from a murder rap in Italy. Caravaggio spent 15 months there avoiding Italian authorities before having to flee Malta for Sicily following a beef with a Knight of the Order. He was a rascal to put it mildly, and proceedings to defrock and expel Caravaggio from the Order took place in the very room where The Beheading of St. John was painted and has hung ever since.
A spectacular digital presentation, “Face to Face with Caravaggio,” examines The Beheading of St. John in granular detail, highlighting its technical expertise.
Anyone unable to make the trip to Malta from the U.S., but still interested in Caravaggio’s work, can find two of his better paintings in the States at Hartford’s Wadsworth Atheneum and Cleveland Museum of Art.
St. John’s Co-Cathedral remains open to the public for daily mass.
Matthew Pandolfino cat sculpture in Sliema, Malta with pink heart collar memorial to Paulina Dembska. Chadd Scott
A 10-minute, 3,80 Euro (roundtrip) ferry ride across Marsamxett Harbour from Valletta takes travelers to Sliema. Young adults, shoppers, and night-life revelers may enjoy basing their Malta vacation here among the high-rises. An astounding amount of development and huge construction cranes the likes of which you’d expect to find in London appear across the Maltese skyline, especially Sliema.
Two or three hours exploring the city will do the trick. Be sure to walk the seaside promenade ringing the peninsula. Anyone who does so will see a large blue cat statue by Matthew Pandolfino with a pink heart collar around its neck. The collar was a tragic add on, a memorial to Paulina Dembska.
The 29-year-old Dembska was raped and murdered in 2022 nearby the sculpture in Independence Garden where she was caring for the park’s cats. Malta has something of a stray/feral cat culture. The crime shocked the country.
Malta is as perfectly safe–idyllic–as any place can be, but that doesn’t mean its exempt from crime, violence, and femicide. Dembska was murdered by a deranged man because she was a woman.
The Sliema promenade honors another Maltese martyr with a monument: Daphne Caruana Galizia.
Galizia was an investigative journalist and mother of three murdered by a car bomb in 2017. She didn’t merely report on corruption and scandal in Malta, she uncovered most of it over a distinguished career that saw her face off with the country’s most powerful politicians and businessmen.
Dembska and Galizia are reminders that contemporary conversations regarding women’s rights and equality and freedom of the press and speech are not merely academic exercises. They are life and death.
Exploring Malta
Cittadella Vicotria in Gozo in the morning light.
Malta has been a favored filming location for nearly a century. Any director looking to recreate ancient Greece or Rome or the medieval Mediterranean or even North Africa gives it a look.
“Game of Thrones” shot routinely in Mdina. Brad Pitt’s “Troy” used the island of Camino. “Midnight Express,” “World War Z” (also starring Pitt), even Steven Spielberg’s “Munich” all filmed in Valletta. “Gladiator” used Kalkarka… and on, and on, and on.
Hollywood and American travelers are aided when visiting Malta by everyone in the tourism sector speaking perfect English, another holdover from British colonization.
Being an island, one of the best ways to see Malta is from the water. Numerous tour operators offer boating excursions encircling it. With any extra time, consider visiting Gozo, the country’s second largest, but much more rural, island. Nature lovers and hikers will feel more at home here. Go on a Wednesday when Valletta is infiltrated by its one mega-cruise docking each week.
Ħaġar Qim and Mnajdra are Neolithic temples situated roughly a third of a mile apart near Qrendi. These monumental temples command impressive views over the sea. Another prehistoric site, the Ħal Saflieni Hypogeum, is an exceptional example of a burial site in use between 4,000 and 1,500 BC.
From the ancient, now to the contemporary, Malta, surrounded on all sides by the sparkling sea underneath a brilliant Mediterranean sun belongs on American travelers’ European “to do” list.
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