Mdina: Hill-City of Knights, Nobles and Faith

The ancient city of Melite was all but destroyed in 870 AD during the Arab conquest. Centuries later, Muslim immigrants from Sicily rebuilt a new citadel on the old Roman hill, renaming it Madīnah. The Arabs laid out Mdina’s characteristic labyrinth of narrow streets and encircled it with stout limestone walls. The Georgian blocks of Maltese honeycomb stone that built those walls still echo their Arab origins. By 1048, Mdina had been reinhabited by “Muslims and their slaves”, and it became a regional stronghold. Its hilltop position – high above the fields and out of sight of the sea – meant Mdina was hard to attack: Byzantine armies later found its heights impregnable.

The city’s medieval fortifications evolved. Early Byzantine or Arab walls surrounded the smaller post-870 town, and vestiges of those early bastions remain visible on Mdina’s northern face. Later, under Norman and later rulers, Mdina’s bastions and towers were reinforced. Sieges by sea were rare (the Greeks Gate and main entrance were the only access points), but Mdina did withstand assaults: for example, a Byzantine fleet failed to take Mdina in 1053, and in 1091, Roger I’s forces forced a brief surrender. By the 15th century, Mdina boasted double ring walls, artillery towers and a barbican protecting its gate. (Much of this medieval masonry survives under later Baroque rebuilding; the 18th-century Vilhena Gate now frames the main entrance.)

“The city, rebuilt by Muslims and their slaves, was small yet strong, a place of refuge above the sea where strangers found safety behind its walls.”
— paraphrased from Ibn Hawqal, Kitāb Ṣūrat al-Arḍ (c. 977 CE)

Cross and Crescent: Conquest and Crowns

From its Arab rebirth, Mdina’s allegiance shifted with Mediterranean power struggles. In 1091, Count Roger I of Sicily claimed Malta – the Mdina council “accepted him as overlord” after a short siege. The Normans allowed Muslim customs to continue at first (coins and administration initially remained Islamic), but Christian influence grew. By the 12th century, Mdina was part of the Norman kingdom of Sicily, and Christian bishops were installed. A Latin-style administration was set up by Roger II in 1127, though local Maltese Muslims were still present decades later.

The island then fell under the Hohenstaufen dynasty: Emperor Frederick II (1194–1250) ruled Sicily and Malta from Palermo. In 1224, he led an expedition to stamp out a Muslim revolt on the islands. Chroniclers note that by the 1240s, Malta’s population still included hundreds of Muslim families, but a decisive campaign in 1248 deported the last of Malta’s Muslims to Sicily. Over the next decades, Malta gradually became a feudal Christian society (though the Maltese language remained rooted in Arabic). In 1266, Malta passed to the French Angevins and, following the Sicilian Vespers (1282), into the hands of Aragonese-Catalan kings.

“Malta obeys the same lord as Sicily, and its city is fair and well-fortified; the people live by their faith and by the sword.”
— adapted from Goffredo Malaterra, De Rebus Gestis Rogerii Calabriae et Siciliae Comitis (c. 1099)

Under Aragonese rule, Mdina flourished as a noble capital. Alfonso V of Aragon (r. 1416–1458) confirmed Mdina’s local rights by royal charter (1482), empowering the Università – the city council of nobles – to govern urban affairs. The historian Mario Buhagiar notes that late-medieval Mdina “stood comparison with the city-communes of Sicily”: it had a sophisticated gentry, a competent Università, and a powerful cathedral chapter. Maltese and foreign nobles, under Aragon’s stability, built grand palazzi in Mdina. (For instance, Palazzo Falson – now a museum – incorporates a 13th-century Norman-style ground floor, later enlarged in the 15th century, and recalls the medieval nobility.)

Throughout these eras, Mdina remained the religious heart of Malta. The Cathedral of Saint Paul, seat of the bishop since early times, dominated the urban centre. The Università and Cathedral Chapter competed to commission art and architecture. In the early 1400s, Mdina even acquired an altarpiece by Catalan master Lluís Borrassà – a retable depicting St Paul’s conversion – attesting to its international connections. Moreover, multiple monasteries and convents sprang up: Franciscans as early as 1392, and later Carmelites, Dominicans and Augustinians established houses within the walls. These orders brought new liturgical art, Gothic and early Renaissance carvings, and frescoes to Mdina’s chapels. (Sadly, a 1693 earthquake would raze much of this medieval artistry, to be rebuilt in Baroque form – but archaeological remains and documentation survive.)

Nobles, Choirs and Cathedrals

Life inside medieval Mdina’s walls was at once quiet and cultured. Only a few hundred families lived within the city (as late as 1480, the cathedral’s town-procurators were chosen by the Università by royal privilege), but they invested richly in faith and civic order. Civic processions around St Publius’ statue in the square, councils held in great halls, and cathedral choirs filling the streets with polyphony – all these were real scenes of medieval Mdina. The cathedral’s medieval choir stalls (transferred in the 17th century) and its carved limestone portal reflect this high culture. Mario Buhagiar observes that Mdina’s patricians were patrons of “pureness of style” in sculpture and architecture, rivalling those of Palermo or Naples.

The Università (Town Council) kept detailed records of the city’s governance. It managed markets, taxation and defence, and funded the cathedral’s music and embellishments. By late medieval times, Mdina even minted its own silver ‘Perraro’ coins for export, a sign of its economic life. Yet beneath the stone façades lay the tensions of an island crossroads: Christian, Muslim, and sometimes Jewish residents coexisted in a community memory. (Mdina had a small medieval synagogue outside the walls, for example, until an outbreak of 1475.) Ethnically, Mdina’s nobles were Sicilian-Aragonese in culture, but they presided over an overwhelmingly Maltese-speaking peasantry.

Honey, Horses and Slaves

Mdina’s economy, unlike that of a port city, depended on its rural hinterland and the island’s commerce. The surrounding Maltese fields produced wheat, barley, olive oil, wine and honey – commodities carried by cart to coastal markets or by foreign ships offshore. Medieval travellers like the geographer Ibn Hawqal remarked on Malta’s rich honey and herds of goats and donkeys. Mdina itself held markets in cloth, salt and livestock.

Slavery was a dark thread in this tapestry. The Arab founders of Mdina brought many slaves with them – possibly Christian captives from Sicily and North Africa. Over time, wealthy Mdina families kept enslaved persons as domestic workers (frequently of Berber or sub-Saharan origin). Remarkably, Mdina’s Greek Gate (one of its medieval portals) was traditionally the only entrance through which slaves were allowed. Conversely, Maltese villagers could become slaves too. In 1429, a Hafsid fleet invaded Malta, sacked the countryside and enslaved thousands of villagers. That raid left Mdina anxious and depopulated, a reminder that even a strong citadel could not fully shield its people from Mediterranean corsairs.

Walls Against the World: Defences and Sieges

Mdina’s name and history became synonymous with fortification. Its medieval walls incorporated both Arabis­tan and later medieval designs. As UNESCO notes, the medieval town was remodelled with dry ditches, round and square towers, barbicans and drawbridges – though most of those features are now buried or overbuilt. In its hilltop heyday, Mdina served as the island’s last line of defence: villagers from the whole island would flee within its gates during pirate raids. Notable episodes include the unsuccessful 1053 Byzantine siege and the short Norman capitulation of 1091. In the summer of 1429, the Hafsid invaders did lay siege to Mdina, which the citizens managed to hold until the attackers withdrew. The 15th century also saw extensive improvements: a barbican was added outside the main gate (1448), and the inner Castellu di la Città – a medieval castle on the southeast hill – was refurbished with artillery embrasures. (Legend holds it was partly demolished in 1453 to make way for a fortress on the mainland.)

By the late 15th century, however, gunpowder warfare had begun to outdate Mdina’s medieval walls. The rising power of the Ottoman Empire and continuous raids prompted the island’s rulers to seek stronger harbours. Although Mdina still bristled with cannons by 1530, its archaic design convinced the new sovereigns to base themselves down by the Grand Harbour.

A New Order Arrives

In 1530, Emperor Charles V granted Malta to the Knights Hospitaller. The Order’s first Grand Master, Philippe Villiers de L’Isle-Adam, marched triumphantly through Mdina’s main gate that November. The key of the city was handed over, but the Knights had already chosen Birgu (Vittoriosa) on the coast as their capital, seeking a deep-water port. With that decision, Mdina’s era as Malta’s political heart ended. The nobles remained in residence, but their influence waned. L’Isle-Adam even built a new palace on the remains of Mdina’s old castle, which became a meeting hall for the Università. From this point, Mdina was effectively a royal backwater.

After 1530, the walls echoed less with trumpet calls than with village life. The Cathedral continued as the archbishop’s seat (although the archbishop moved temporarily to the newly founded Valletta in the late 16th century). Mdina still housed government offices, a mint and its old institutions, but it was far from the corridors of real power. As UNESCO observes, Mdina “stopped acting as the political centre” once the Knights took over. Its great stone palaces stood quieter than before, and its streets fell silent. Over the next two centuries, Mdina’s population shrank; by World War II, it had earned the romantic nickname “the Silent City” due to its small, tranquil community.