Palazzo Parisio, Naxxar's little Versailles

From the street, Palazzo Parisio is just another limestone facade on a Maltese village square, which is exactly why stepping inside is such a surprise. Behind a studded bronze door lies a vaulted, frescoed hall, a marble staircase, gilded salons and a walled garden you’d never expect in Naxxar. It’s a private palace, and the owning family live in their homes at the end of the garden.

From hunting lodge to little Versailles

The history the house publishes begins in the early 18th century, when Grand Master Antonio Manoel de Vilhena kept a hunting lodge here. The orangery was created in 1733 and survives, along with a grotto carved from the stone. Towards the end of that century the Parisio family took the building on and gave it its name, and in 1798, after the French invasion, Paolo Parisio lent it to Napoleon.

The big change came in 1898. Marquis Giuseppe Scicluna, a Maltese banker and merchant, bought it intending to create a winter palace, a little Versailles on the Mediterranean, and brought in the Italian architect Carlo Sada. The work was finished a year before he died, in 1907. It has belonged to the Scicluna family ever since, and today Baroness Justine Pergola is in charge.

What you’ll see inside

In the entrance hall you’re greeted by a bronze bust of the Marquis, four marble statues of the seasons and his original carriage, alongside portraits of his descendants by Edward Caruana Dingli. The grand staircase is one you’ll remember. According to the palace, the balustrade is a single six-metre piece of Carrara marble, and one of the carved doors is actually stone painted to look like mahogany, right beside a real one.

Upstairs is the Rococo ballroom, whose mirrors create endless reflections in homage to the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles, watched over by eight busts of Grand Masters. Then come the billiard room, with a ceiling by Giacomo Olzai celebrating Fortuna, the music room, the Marquis’s study, whose ceiling tells the arrival of the telephone and the opening of the Suez Canal in mythological code, and the Sala Lombarda, with works by Mattia Preti, Giovanni Paolo Panini and Philipp Peter Roos. The Pompeian dining room has paintings by Venuti, and the family chapel holds a 17th-century wooden altar that belonged to Grand Master Nicolás Cotoner.

The garden, the part I’d never miss

The garden is a walled enclosure in the Italian tradition, with cobbled paths, gnarled olive trees, citrus, bougainvillea and palms. The palace takes pride in being the only non-Italian member of the Grandi Giardini Italiani association, which describes it as an extraordinary complex of walls and gardens with the unusual trompe-l’oeil of the 18th-century orangery and its fountains. Its olive groves produce the house’s own oil. For me, this is what makes the trip worthwhile.

Eating and afternoon tea

By day the Garden Restaurant serves breakfast, lunch and the afternoon tea the house calls legendary. In the evening, Luna takes over for dinner. On Wednesdays there are gin and live music nights in the garden, with a €30 per person deposit to book, deducted from your bill. Online bookings cover tables of up to 12.

Tour prices and getting there

I need to tell you what I don’t know. The palace offers tours of the house and garden, but I couldn’t find their price or times online, and I’d rather leave a gap than make one up. Your safest bet is to email the house before you go.

It’s at 29 Victory Square in Naxxar. Route 49 comes from Valletta, and by car the palace recommends the Trade Fair car park, about five minutes’ walk away. If noble houses are your thing, look at Casa Rocca Piccola in Valletta, which its family still call home, and at the house museum of Palazzo Falson in Mdina. To walk off lunch, I’d head up to neighbouring Għargħur, a small village on a spur of the Great Fault.