Over 4,500 visitors walked through the doors of Heritage Malta’s museums in Vittoriosa during this weekend’s Birgufest. Of these more than 3,000 visited the Inquisitor’s Palace where they could walk through living history in a place that has been used both the residence of the Inquisitor and as a prison. The Malta Maritime Museum also proved to be a popular spot with more than 1,000 visitors during the night.
Furthermore, on Friday, close to 2,000 students visited both museums in Vittoriosa where they were given information about an important part of Malta’s cultural and historical past.
The Inquisitor’s Palace is one of the very few surviving examples of a style of palace that would have been found all over Europe and South America in the early modern period. Many such buildings succumbed to the ravages of time or became victims of the reactionary power unleashed by the French Revolution against the ancient regime and all it represented. The fact that Malta’s palace, throughout its five centuries of history, always hosted high-ranking officials representing the main ruling powers on the island helped ensure its survival.
At the Maritime Museum visitors walked through the museum halls dedicated to the various period of Maltese maritime history starting from ancient times through the period of the Knights of St John all the way to the British period. The exhibits are organised into thematic and chronological sectors with one hall presenting an overview of Malta as a naval base, and depicting aspects of naval and civilian life, both leisure and work. There is also a wide collection of paintings, photographs, models, uniforms, weapons, instruments and other artefacts that illustrate the history of the Royal Navy in the Mediterranean during the 19th and 20th centuries and attest to the Navy’s impact on the economy and social life on the Maltese islands.