Munxar, the small village that Xlendi belongs to

Munxar is the village hardly anyone mentions, yet one of Gozo’s busiest spots belongs to it. Xlendi Bay falls under its local council, and the Sanap cliffs, which I’d put among the finest views on the south of the island, start a short walk from its square.

A small village right next to Victoria

Il-Munxar sits about ten minutes’ walk south-west of Victoria, squeezed between the slopes of two parallel valleys. The NSO’s end-2025 count gives 1,960 residents, and the striking figure is that 861 of them hold a foreign passport, close to half. Very few places on Gozo come near that, and I read it as a sign of how strongly Xlendi pulls people in as somewhere to live, not just to visit.

The name is an old Maltese word for a bucksaw. The Ministry for Gozo offers two explanations, either the H shape of the land between the valleys or the zigzag of the cliffs as seen from the Bardan heights. The first written record is a notarial deed from 1584, when the village was just a handful of families.

The church, the square and the 1942 shelters

The parish church, dedicated to St Paul, is a small baroque building in Maltese stone put up between 1914 and 1925. Munxar was the last place on Gozo to get its own parish, in December 1957. The church stands on one of the island’s largest squares, and beneath it run Second World War shelters dug in 1942 by Public Works labourers under the architect Guzeppi Savona. The Ministry doesn’t say whether they’re open, so don’t count on going in.

The village’s best-known son is Joseph Aquilina, born here on 7 April 1911. He became Dean of the Faculty of Arts at the University of Malta and compiled the monumental Maltese-English dictionary, and Munxar’s playground now bears his name.

Sanap and Il-Pinnur, the best reason to climb

What I’d do in Munxar is leave the square by the country lane that runs up to the edge of the Sanap cliffs. Their highest point is called Il-Pinnur, and the Ministry describes it as a lookout over Gozo’s south coast, with Comino to the left and northern Malta straight ahead. From there a path drops between terraced fields, often grazed by goats and sheep, down to Xlendi.

For me that’s the best way to arrive in Xlendi. You come in on foot in the late afternoon light and have dinner by the water. From the Xlendi Walk you also get views back to Sanap and across to the Ta’ Ċenċ cliffs.

Anything else within Munxar’s boundaries?

The Marziena Temples, which the Ministry describes as blocks that look megalithic and might date from the same period as Ġgantija. They’ve never been excavated, so there’s nothing to visit beyond a look from outside. Then there’s the Xlendi valley, a gorge green all year round and one of the few habitats of the endemic land crab. You reach it from the narrow road that winds down from Munxar.

The first festa of summer

St Paul’s feast is officially on 10 February, but Munxar celebrates it when the weather’s better, usually on the third Sunday of May. The Ministry sees it as the curtain-raiser for Gozo’s festa season. 2026 was the exception, with the celebrations moved to 13 September. The village also runs cultural events through the year, many of them down in Xlendi.

Joseph Aquilina and the village’s cultural life

I’ll come back to Aquilina for a moment, because he sums Munxar up rather well. He studied in London, rose to dean at the University of Malta and wrote fiction, criticism, drama, linguistics and religion, yet he’s remembered above all for the Maltese-English dictionary, a monumental piece of work in the Ministry’s words. For a village that was a handful of families in 1584, that’s quite a legacy.

Munxar has a reputation today for a busy cultural calendar, both on its own square and down in Xlendi. As for the Sanap cliffs, the Ministry’s page on them stresses the sense of isolation, with only the waves and the seabirds for company, and how much the place changes with the hour. I’d go at dawn or late in the afternoon.