St John's Co-Cathedral

Essentially, you take a group of some devoutly religious chaps, the Knights of Malta, who run the country and are known for their vast wealth. Then, you offer to devote a church to them. They’ll all be terribly flattered by such a fine gesture and start to make gifts of huge artistic value to help make it look nice inside. If they don’t happen to have some priceless work of art then they’ll hand over a sizable wodge of cash so you can go out and buy some! It’s a magnificent ruse!    

But all flippancy aside, there’s an unwritten rule for tourists and it comes in three parts. You can’t go to Malta and not visit Valletta and you can’t go to Valletta and not visit St John’s Co-Cathedral. And, part three is that you can’t visit the cathedral and not go to the Oratory to take a look at Caravaggio’s famous painting, The Beheading of St John the Baptist.

This masterpiece was created by the acknowledged Italian artistic genius and hell-raiser in 1608. Caravaggio was on the run from his native Rome after one of his bar fights resulted in the death of a fellow brawler. He fled to Naples to escape Roman law then crossed over the sea, where the Maltese Knights of the order of St John, thrilled at having an artist of such repute in their midst made him one of the order and commissioned him to paint this magnificent work featuring their sponsor (ie St John) for the altar of their new cathedral. It was the largest work Caravaggio ever created and the only one he ever saw fit to put his signature on.

Enlisting the great artist was only one small part of this money-no-object project for which the great Maltese architect, Girolamo Cassar, was enlisted for design purposes. His drawings were turned into this amazing building between 1573 and 1578.

The building work happened not long after the Great Siege of 1565, when the Ottoman Empire was still smarting from its failure to capture control of the Island and another invasion was an on-going and serious threat. So serious in fact that the exterior of St John’s Co-Cathedral was deliberately dulled down compared to the interior. The reason was that Cassar wanted to maintain the image of a continuing line of fortifications within the city itself in case the Ottoman chaps returned.

The inside, however, makes up for the tawdry outside in spades and is a feast for the eyes! It was largely decorated by another Italian artist and another knight, Mattia Preti, who designed the intricate carved stone walls, all done in-situ, and painted the vaulted ceiling and side altars with scenes from the life of St John.

This place is an absolute must-see if only to be able to tell people that you’ve been to possibly the only Co-Cathedral you will ever encounter. This label is nothing to do with an historic notable having a stutter but refers to an arrangement in the 1820s, when the Bishop of Malta, whose seat was at Mdina, was allowed to use St John’s as an alternative. Hence it became his Co-Cathedral.

St John’s is open from 9.30am to 4.30pm Monday to Friday and 9.30am to 12.30pm on Saturdays. It’s closed on Sundays. Admission is €6 for adults, €4.60 for OAPs, €3.50 for students and is free for under 12s.