Santa Luċija, a residents' village with a Chinese garden

With 2,650 residents, Santa Luċija is tiny next to its neighbours south of Grand Harbour, and I won’t dream up a sightseeing trail for it. What it does have, and I find it rather charming, is a Chinese garden in the middle of a Maltese residential district, plus population figures that say a lot about the kind of place it is.

A Chinese garden by Luqa

On its gardens page, Visit Malta lists the Chinese Garden of Serenity on Triq Ħal Luqa and says it has been open to the public since 1997. The same page quotes a horticulturalist who ranks it, alongside Ta’ Qali National Park and the Independence Garden on the Sliema seafront, among the modern gardens in Malta worth noting. In a country whose best-known gardens are historic, such as the Argotti in Floriana, laid out in the 18th century as Grand Master Pinto’s private garden according to the same page, a Chinese-style garden in a southern suburb is a real oddity.

Now the practical bit. Visit Malta publishes no opening hours or price, and the contact it gives is the local council itself. If you’re making a special trip, I’d ask first. If you’re in the area anyway, it’s a short and unusual stop.

A village with hardly any foreign residents

The NSO put the population at 2,650 at the end of 2025, two fewer than the year before, which makes it one of the few councils that didn’t grow. What stands out is where people come from. Only 145 residents are foreign, 5.5%, and by my working from the NSO spreadsheet only Mtarfa and Dingli have a lower share among the 68 councils. On an island where foreign residents are already the majority in Msida or Sliema, Santa Luċija is the other face of Malta.

At 3,668 people per km² it’s a compact neighbourhood rather than a country village. It sits in the Southern Harbour statistical district, its council says it belongs to the Southern Region, and Luqa, whose council places it to the east, completes the picture with Paola, Gudja and Għaxaq.

What else is nearby

I haven’t found any monument with opening hours in Santa Luċija itself. What you do have close by, with published times and prices, are the Tarxien Temples and the Ħal Saflieni Hypogeum in Paola. If you’ve ended up here because of a nearby flat or a visit to friends, those are the two stops I’d make, with the garden as a breather in between.

Mind the other Santa Luċija

One detail that can spare you grief when booking. Gozo has another Santa Luċija, a hamlet near Kerċem, and the MTA register lists a guesthouse there as ‘Santa Lucija Gozo’. In Santa Luċija on the island of Malta, the same register has no hotels or licensed holiday lets at all. If you see a listing with this name, check which island it’s on before you pay. To stay nearby, I’d look in Valletta and come south by bus.