How big Malta is, in square miles and in bus hours

Malta measures 316 km², which works out at roughly 122 square miles. That number doesn’t mean much until you put it next to something, and the comparison I find most useful is with other small states. Malta is about twice the size of Liechtenstein and roughly five times San Marino. The Maltese government sums it up by calling the archipelago one of the smallest in the world.

How many square kilometres is Malta?

The official figure is 316 km², given by both the Maltese government and Heritage Malta. Spain’s foreign ministry splits it by island, giving the main island 245 km², 78% of the country; Gozo, 67 km²; and Comino, 3 km². For Comino, the Gozo tourist board says 3.5 km², so the safest way to put it is about 3 km². The rest is uninhabited islets, such as Cominotto, Filfla and St Paul’s Islands, which I cover in the Maltese islands.

One thing I couldn’t track down is an official area for each locality. The NSO publishes population and density for all 68 councils, but not their square kilometres in the files I used, so I don’t quote any.

Malta alongside other small countries

This guide works through Europe’s countries from smallest to largest, and Malta comes fifth, with everything on the country gathered in my Malta travel guide. Liechtenstein covers 160 km² and San Marino 61.19 km². The difference is that Malta is an archipelago, with 253 km of coastline, and far more crowded. How its islands sit between Sicily and Libya is shown in where Malta is on the map.

That’s the other half of the story. Into 316 km² go 588,254 people, which makes 1,867 per square kilometre. On the island of Malta it rises to 2,218, and in Senglea it reaches 15,060. All the population figures are in Malta’s population.

A small island you can’t cross in ten minutes

This is where a lot of visitors get their planning wrong. On the map the main island looks like a quick hop, but the Gozo tourist board reckons on about an hour from the airport to Ċirkewwa, at the north-western tip, by bus or taxi. With so many people in so little space the traffic is heavy, and the Foreign Office describes some roads as in poor condition.

My advice is to measure distances in hours. One big area a day, whether that’s Valletta and the harbour, the interior with Mdina, the south with the temples or the north with its beaches, always from the same base. I go through each area in the island of Malta.

How big is Gozo?

Gozo covers 67 km², which the Gozo tourist board rounds to a third of Malta. Using Spain’s foreign ministry figures it’s a little over a quarter, but the point stands, and to my mind it’s an island you can drive round in a day. It’s separated from Malta by about 5 km of sea, 25 minutes by ferry, and its highest point, Ta’ Dbieġi, reaches 195 m near San Lawrenz.

Little space, little height, a lot of coast

Malta has no mountains. The highest point on the main island is Ta’ Dmejrek, at 253 m, and the cliffs at Dingli fall as much as 230 m to the water. What it does have is coast, 253 km of it for 316 km² of land, so the sea is never far away. For a visitor that’s the great advantage of such a small country, because in a single day you can see a 16th-century capital, a temple more than 5,000 years old and a cove to swim in.

Everything that fits into 316 km²

What impresses me about Malta isn’t how small it is but how much it holds. Within 316 km² there are three UNESCO World Heritage Sites, 68 local councils, an airport whose runways measure 2.4 and 3.5 km and which handled 10,061,969 passengers in 2025, and dozens of protected Natura 2000 sites. The Natura 2000 site of Comino and its islets alone covers 294.64 hectares according to the European Environment Agency, almost 1% of the country. That’s why I wouldn’t treat it as a long-weekend destination, however small it looks on the map.

For British visitors there’s one more reassuring measure of scale. English is an official language, the plugs match yours and you drive on the left, so a compact island also means a quick adjustment.