Birkirkara, the big inland town and its St Helen

Birkirkara is the big inland town hardly anyone visits. It has more residents than Sliema or Mosta, yet few travellers ever get off the bus here. I would, briefly, for the basilica and for a railway detail I find one of the island’s great curiosities.

Malta’s second town

At the end of 2025 Birkirkara had 30,166 residents according to the NSO, making it the country’s second most populous locality, behind only San Pawl il-Baħar. Visit Malta still calls it the largest population centre on the islands, but the NSO figures no longer bear that out. Two in three residents are Maltese.

Visit Malta notes that Birkirkara was one of the twelve medieval parishes already in place in 1436, which later split into separate parishes. That’s why its parish church is called the Matrici, the mother of those around it. One of the daughters is neighbouring San Ġwann, where the first St Helen’s church stood.

St Helen’s Basilica

It’s the church in the photo, and it’s worth the stop. Its website explains that in 1630 Pope Urban VIII raised the parish church to a collegiate church dedicated to St Helen, although she only became the official titular saint in 1709. The façade has three bays on two tiers, twin belfries and a row of statues, and inside the plan is a cross with an apse at each end. Virginio Monti painted the frescoes of the dome and vaults between 1906 and 1910, and they were restored between 1985 and 1999.

I like a smaller detail too, the west sacristy of 1791, with its washbasin topped by Moses striking water from the rock, by the sculptor Vincenzo Dimech. The basilica also has a museum, set up by a volunteer association, showing pieces once only seen from a distance during the St Helen feast, such as silverware by the Cannataci brothers. I don’t have opening hours or prices from a source, so check its website before you go. More like this in churches in Malta.

The old core, a windmill and a station

Visit Malta describes a mostly modern Birkirkara that keeps an old core of alleys and village houses, where the larger town houses tend to be band club or party headquarters. It also mentions the old parish church of the Assumption and two windmills, one a private home and the other, Ta’ Ganu, in the centre, now an art gallery.

And here’s my favourite bit. In a small garden separating old from new stands one of the stations of the commuter railway that ran from Rabat to Valletta. Most people are surprised Malta ever had a train; what it meant for other towns is covered in Ħamrun, the railway town. A civil work from another age, the 17th-century Wignacourt Aqueduct, has its inspection tower in neighbouring Santa Venera.

Getting there and where to stay

Bus 42 leaves Valletta terminal for Ċirkewwa and runs through Ħamrun, Birkirkara and Mosta, so Birkirkara fits neatly on the way north. The MTA register lists no licensed hotels here, just two guesthouses, three hostels and 16 holiday lets, so I’d stay in Valletta or Sliema and come by bus.