Outpost of empire

One of the things that immediately strikes the British visitor to Malta is the presence of red phone boxes, and pillar boxes bearing the stamp of the Royal Mail, writes Claire Smith in The Scotsman:

..It is also probably the only place in the world where you could find a sandwich shop called The Duke of Kent Snack Bar...From the modern concrete hotels that crowd the peninsula of Sliema, you can gaze across the water to the capital, Valletta, the fortified town built by the knights. Walter Scott visited and Coleridge struggled with his opium addiction here. More recently, it has become a favourite location for Hollywood films. In 1999 Oliver Reed dropped dead in a bar now renamed Ollie's while in town to film Gladiator..

..But this is also a place where everyday life goes on, where Maltese citizens linger in tiny cafés, drinking super-strong espressos and where streetfront bakers sell pastizzi, the savoury pasties eaten as a snack or with afternoon tea.

Nearby, in the Baroque monstrosity of St John's Cathedral, knights from different regions of Europe competed to create the most opulent designs. Legend has it that the precious materials were extracted in taxes from sheltering pirates, while Caravaggio, in exile from Italy, contributed two livid masterpieces, The Beheading of St John and St Jerome Writing, before being expelled as "a foul and rotten limb".

On the northern side of Malta, one of the most densely populated islands in the world, is a landscape more dominated by concrete. Here are marine parks, lapdancing bars and an artificial beach laid on top of the island's naturally rocky shore. The set for Popeye, one of the first Hollywood films to use Malta as a location, has become a popular tourist attraction.

Yet take a 20-minute ferry ride to Gozo and you travel back in time once more. The two islands enjoy a mostly good-natured but occasionally tense rivalry. Maltese daytrippers complain about their cars being sought out by the Gozo parking wardens. But others will whisper that Gozo is the way Malta used to be. And it is here you get the strongest feeling of the distinct culture of this part of the world...