Fontana, the spring village on the road down to Xlendi

Fontana is the village you pass through without noticing on the way from Victoria down to Xlendi. It’s practically a suburb of the capital now, but it has something few places on Gozo keep so visibly, a spring that has run for centuries and a washhouse that people still use.

A village named after its spring

Il-Fontana lies halfway between Victoria and Xlendi Bay. The NSO counted 1,171 residents at the end of 2025, although the Ministry for Gozo’s website still says about 900. What’s undisputed is that it’s the smallest village on Gozo by area.

The name is Italian for a spring or fountain. In Maltese it’s It-Triq tal-Għajn, the street of the springs, and the Ministry explains that the steady supply of fresh water is what drew the first settlers, mostly farmers and hunters, plus a few fishermen who worked out of Xlendi until the 19th century.

The Għajn tal-Ħasselin washhouse

Heading down towards the lower village, on the right of the Xlendi road, is the thing I’d come for. In the 16th century arches were built over the springs so that people washing their clothes had some cover, and a network of stone channels carried the water round the valley. The washhouse is called Għajn tal-Ħasselin, and the Ministry for Gozo says it’s still working.

I like it because it isn’t a museum piece behind glass. It’s five-hundred-year-old water infrastructure that locals still use, and it explains better than any exhibition why the village sits exactly where it does.

A church paid for by fishermen

The Church of the Sacred Heart of Jesus has a story that feels very Gozitan to me. It was funded by the Xlendi fishermen who lived in Fontana, who started collecting money in the late 19th century and gave part of their earnings and a great many hours of their own labour. It was consecrated on 29 January 1905, and Fontana became a parish on 27 March 1911.

Inside are two paintings by Giuseppe Calì, including the Sacred Heart over the altar, works by Silvio Galimberti, Lazzaro Pisani, Paul Camilleri Cauchi and Robert Caruana Dingli, and a titular statue carved by Wistin Camilleri in 1923. The Ministry also picks out the ganutell bouquets and the lacework that decorate the church.

What’s in Lunzjata Valley?

From the lower end of Fontana, Lunzjata Valley opens up and runs towards Kerċem. It’s a fertile valley of springs and irrigation channels that the Knights used for hunting and that’s now given over to farming. The Ministry calls it one of the most picturesque on Gozo and says the trail is easy, even with a pushchair.

At the valley entrance, under a grand arch, stands the Chapel of the Annunciation. It’s recorded as early as 1370 and was rebuilt in the early 16th century, partly cut into the rock. Its altarpiece is by Fra Lucas Garnier, his only painting on Gozo, and the feast day is 25 March.

The festa and the fireworks

The feast of the Sacred Heart is held around the second week of June, and in 2026 it fell on the 14th. Fontana has a name for pyrotechnics, and the Ministry says many of Gozo’s finest fireworks makers came from here. If your dates line up, it’s a good excuse for dinner in Xlendi afterwards, and the next day you can pick up where you left off with things to do in Gozo.

A chapel with seven centuries behind it

The Lunzjata chapel deserves a paragraph of its own. The Ministry for Gozo records that by 1370 a chapel of the Annunciation on this spot had become part of a royal benefice, run first by the Aragonese king from Sicily and later by the Grand Master of the Order. It keeps features typical of late medieval chapels, and in 1954 Joseph Farrugia gave it a statue of the Annunciation carved by the Gozitan sculptor Wistin Camilleri Cauchi.

The parish church in the village also holds a 1909 statue of St Andrew by Karlu Mallia. I wouldn’t cross the island for either, though if you’re already walking the valley, looking into both churches takes very little time and rounds off the morning nicely.