Fgura, a post-war town with Punic tombs

Fgura has a page here because it’s one of Malta’s 68 local councils, not because you need to go and see it. It’s a residential town of 14,270 people, according to the NSO, and the most useful thing I can do is tell you what it is and what to expect if you’re staying there.

A 1960s town with ancient roots

Visit Malta sums it up nicely. At first glance it looks like a new town built in the sixties, but underneath there are prehistoric origins, with old tombs in the area and hints of a Phoenician settlement. The local council pins down the key find, six Punic tombs on Liedna Street from the third and fourth centuries BC, whose contents are now displayed at the National Museum of Archaeology in Valletta. The street, incidentally, is named after the leafy plant painted on that pottery.

The town’s name has two explanations. One points to a ‘figura’, a roadside niche with an image of Our Lady of Mount Carmel on the road between Żabbar and Paola; the other to Gozitan families who brought the name of an area of Gozo called Fgura. Neither is documented, and the council says as much.

Growing in a hurry

After the war, Fgura became a fashionable, quieter place to live and houses sprang up everywhere. The council says the Carmelites’ first church opened in 1950, that Fgura only got its own parish on 21 January 1965, and that the present church went up between 1976 and 1988. Today Fgura runs into Bormla, Żabbar, Paola and Tarxien, and its density of 12,488 people per km² is the fifth highest in Malta by my reckoning from NSO figures.

Two corners with a story

The council points to two places in local life. In George Stevens Square stands a monument to that Maltese writer, a founder of a literary society, by the sculptor Alfred Camilleri Cauchi, who lives and works in Fgura; it went up on 6 September 1986. And there’s a public garden named after Reggie Miller, founder of the General Workers’ Union, opened on 28 March 1976. Neither is a tourist sight, but together they tell you what kind of place Fgura is, a working-class village that became a town within a few decades. With 14,270 residents it’s now the second-largest locality in the Southern Harbour district, behind only Żabbar.

Does it make sense to stay in Fgura?

Only if you find something that suits you, because there’s barely any choice. The MTA register lists one guesthouse and 27 holiday lets, and no hotels. In its favour are the location, a stone’s throw from the Three Cities, and the bus. Route 91 heads into Valletta via Paola, Marsa and Floriana, and the other way on to Żabbar and Marsaskala. If it’s the sea you’re after, beyond Żabbar on the coast lies Xgħajra, a village of 2,604 people with a seafront promenade.