Underground Valletta, the city dug out beneath the city

There’s another Valletta underneath Valletta. I don’t mean that figuratively; it’s a web of tunnels, cisterns and passages the Knights dug so their capital could survive a siege, and which the Maltese extended when the bombs started falling in 1940. Underground Valletta is the tour that takes you into it, and for me it changes how you walk the streets above afterwards.

A city built to hold out

Heritage Malta tells it well. Valletta was built as a fortress first and a city second, and what lay beneath was its lifeline. There were tunnels for moving troops and storing grain, but above all the digging served two things any besieged city depends on, and any peacetime one too, water and drainage.

Centuries later came a second frenzy of digging. During the Second World War 17,000 tonnes of bombs were dropped on Malta, and Valletta’s population moved underground into a dense network of shelters that reused and enlarged the tunnels and cisterns already there. The city is a World Heritage Site, and Heritage Malta argues it can’t be fully understood without what lies below. I’d agree, and if that chapter grips you, my guide to Malta in the Second World War tells the full story.

Booking, and which days it runs

This is the part to get right, because you can’t just turn up. Tours run only on Mondays, Wednesdays and Sundays, at 10:00, 11:00, 12:00 and 13:00, and booking through Heritage Malta’s online shop is compulsory. That timetable stays the same across all three periods Heritage Malta has published, up to 28 February 2027.

The meeting point isn’t at the tunnels but at MUŻA in Valletta, half an hour before the tour. I wouldn’t cut that fine. Get there early and see the museum first; it opens at 10:00 in season and needs a little over an hour.

Sunday is its best day

There’s a quirk of the calendar worth using. St John’s Co-Cathedral is closed to visitors on Sundays, and Sunday happens to be one of the three tour days. If your Valletta stay includes a Sunday, I’d give it over to the underground, with the tunnels in the morning and MUŻA either side, and keep St John’s for a weekday. That way the Sunday closure costs you nothing.

The catch is Lascaris. The War Rooms open Monday to Saturday only, so if you want to see both underground sites on the same day, it has to be a Monday or a Wednesday. On those days I’d take an early tunnel slot, walk down to Lascaris from Upper Barrakka around midday, and catch the Saluting Battery firing at 12:00 on the way. It’s a full and very wartime day, but a genuinely satisfying one.

What they ask of you before you go down

Heritage Malta is firm about footwear. You need closed, comfortable shoes, and anyone wearing high heels, sandals or flip-flops won’t be let in. It sounds minor, but in midsummer it’s exactly what people forget.

Nor is it for every age. Under-6s can’t go in, and children aged 6 to 11 must be with an adult. Access is by steps, and some areas may have loud noises or lighting effects that bother sensitive visitors. If someone in your group has limited mobility, I’d look at another option.

Price, and whether it’s worth it

Adults pay €15, and over-60s, students, 12 to 17-year-olds and children aged 6 to 11 pay €10. It’s not in the Multisite Pass, which excludes it along with the Hypogeum. It costs more than Fort St Elmo or MUŻA, and I do feel the price. I’d still go, because nothing else shows you the civilian infrastructure that kept the city going through the bombing.

If you want more of Valletta’s underground life, there are two other ways in. The Lascaris War Rooms are the military side, the headquarters that ran the air defence. And at Casa Rocca Piccola the guided tour goes down into the two wells the family turned into shelters, where over a hundred people would squeeze in. Three different angles on the same siege, and together they explain why Malta was awarded the George Cross.