Kirkop, a small village with a standing stone by the airport

Kirkop is one of those villages almost everyone drives straight past on the way to the airport. It’s small and very local, yet it keeps something few Maltese villages still have, a prehistoric stone standing within its limits that somebody once topped with a cross.

Is-Salib, a menhir with a cross

Visit Malta describes it as a square-sectioned stone pillar about 10 feet high, a little over 3 metres, on Triq ir-Ramlija. It’s called Is-Salib, ‘the cross’, and the reason is rather neat. The name doesn’t come from the two crosses carved near the base, which are still visible, but from one that used to be mounted on top. What the stone was for is anyone’s guess. The official page suggests it may be the only survivor of a temple that has otherwise disappeared.

I think it’s worth the detour once you’ve seen the big megalithic temples. Here the whole visit is the stone and the story behind it, and that’s enough. According to Visit Malta, it’s one of the few menhirs still standing in Malta.

A village born from Gudja

Visit Malta’s page on Kirkop calls it a quaint village typical of the ancient settlements of the south, one that keeps its rural charm despite having the airport next door. By the late 15th century it was big enough for two churches, and both were rebuilt and embellished in the 17th. In 1592 it broke away from the parish of Gudja and got its own.

Before that, the surrounding countryside was thinly populated. According to Mqabba council, a single priest at Bir Miftuħ then had some 55 chapels in his care, this village’s among them, along with those of Mqabba, Safi and Luqa.

Kirkop today

Of its 2,696 residents at the end of 2025, only 282 were foreign, 10.5%, and by my count from NSO figures just seven councils have a lower share. The village gained 40 people in a year, and at 2,363 per km² it’s a compact place. Its own council places it in the Western Region, but the NSO counts it in the South Eastern district. Luqa council places it south of Luqa, next to Safi and Mqabba.

In 2011 Visit Malta included it in a project of walking itineraries through villages on the edge of mainstream tourism. That’s the best way to think of it.

On to Ħal Millieri, and where to stay

Carry on south and you reach what Visit Malta calls the old village of Ħal Millieri, between Żurrieq, Qrendi, Mqabba and Kirkop. Its medieval chapels, with frescoes, open on the first Sunday of each month in the morning, and I cover them under Żurrieq.

Places to stay are thin on the ground. The MTA register, as checked on 28 September 2026, shows one guesthouse and five holiday lets, and no hotel. I’d treat Kirkop as a short stop on a day around the south, based in Valletta.