Reinventing Malta

Malta has had a makeover thanks to competition from rival destinations, says James Jackson, author of "Blood Rock", a historical thriller based around the siege of Malta in 1565. From The Daily Telegraph:

One of my abiding memories of holidaying in Malta as a child during the 1960s was the view over Marsamuscetto harbour from the poolside of the Phoenicia hotel. The harbour promenade is lined with restaurants and bars able to mix with the salubrious best Back then, the island was a proud - if forgotten -Mediterranean backwater, a place of barren beauty and prickly-pear, of Catholic churches and old ladies dressed in black, of abandoned wartime gun-emplacements, of occasional polo on the Marsa, of gently inebriated expats.

Travel to this limestone speck, if not exactly frowned upon, was usually enough to provoke a raised eyebrow and the question "Why?" It was a happy and often rejected destination. History moved on, developers moved in, and while that view from the pool of what is now the Méridien Phoenicia remains unblemished, a lot has changed. Not always for the better. From the 1970s, and accelerating through the following decades, the blight of cheap and cheerless apartment blocks spread as cancerously as cut-price flights and nylon-singlet package operators allowed. Even today, head up the east coast towards St Paul's Bay and you begin to pray for a return of the Luftwaffe to raze the ugly concrete sprawl to the ground.

Somehow, the spirit of the island survived, the century changed, and inexpensive air travel ensured the lagered-up and clinically obese could reach every other inch of our threatened planet. Malta was faced with a pressing challenge: to reinvent and rebrand itself or die. It chose the former. Visit Valletta, that baroque gem of a capital perched above one of the greatest natural harbours on earth, today, and you will find a manic pedestrianisation and congestion-charge programme under way. Gone are the tawdry shops and fly-blown cafés; vanished are the derelict wharves and vacant warehouses. In their place is a harbour promenade lined with bars and restaurants able to mix with the salubrious best. There are super-yachts in the marina (Roman Abramovich's vessel has been here) while the rich and famous are snapping up holiday bolt-holes on the neighbouring island of Gozo; international artistes, from Sting and Elton John to José Carreras and Andrea Bocelli, are content to fly in and perform..

..Like anywhere in the Mediterranean, mistakes have been made and the carbuncles and linear developments of former years will take time and effort to expunge. To the south-west is old Malta, with its unspoilt clifftops and dry-stone walls. To the north-east is hideous Malta, with its squalid concrete and featureless sprawl. But as rare and colourful plants may bloom on blitzed and derelict wasteland, so the rock outcrop of Malta is transforming into something more appealing to the sophisticated traveller. For sure, the downmarket will remain - witness The Pub on Archbishop Street, Valletta, in which the late and great Oliver Reed enjoyed his last beverages. Malta has a way to go - but it's getting there quickly.