National Museum of Natural History

To start with, there aren’t that many museums housed in an eighteenth century palace, so some might argue it’s worth the admission fee to see inside such a historic and magnificent building. Vilhena Palace to give it its proper name was restructured by Grand Master Antonio Manoel de Vilhena in 1726. It’s designed in the French baroque style and in its day it also served as the law courts. Inside, a number of prison cells still survive.

It served as a temporary hospital during the cholera outbreak in 1837, as a sanatorium for British troops in 1860, and as a hospital for tuberculosis patients in the early twentieth century. It suffered a number of structural cracks during WWII so, although it was ear-marked to become a museum in the 1960’s, it was only officially inaugurated as a National Museum of Natural History in 1973.

The facility is now the national repository of biological specimens and it contains a number of historically important collections, including more than 10,000 rocks and minerals, 3,500 birds, birds’ eggs and nests, 200 mammals and 200 fish species, as well as thousands of local and exotic shells and insects and a very impressive fossil collection. Display areas within the Museum have been enhanced recently.

Interesting parts of the museum include a section dedicated to Malta’s national bird, the blue rock thrush, and national plant, Maltese centaury; an area dedicated to paleontology; the remains of the Maltese quaternary period, where highlights include a tusk of a pygmy elephant, the teeth of a pygmy hippopotamus, and a lower jaw of a Maltese giant dormouse. There’s a display area dedicated to reptiles, which includes several local and exotic species of lizards, snakes and turtles and a small hall dedicated to marine ecosystems.

Be sure to visit the ornithology hall too, where you’ll find various dioramas of ecosystems; a collection of local shelled and exotic animals (with the most notable item being the large flying squid washed ashore in 1989 at St. Paul’s Bay). There’s also a display dedicated to insects, which includes butterflies, moths, beetles, dragonflies, bees and wasps, a hall dedicated to minerals which includes at least 850 pieces of rocks and minerals and of course the biological and fossil collections.

The National Museum of Natural History is in San Publius Square in Mdina and is open from Monday to Sunday from 9.00am to 5.00pm. Admission is €5, with reduced rates for children, students and OAPs. Mdina is the former capital city so is well signposted and easy to reach by car. On the bus you need numbers 51, 52 or 53 from Valletta.