Twelve rooms of a Valletta palace where the de Piro family still lives sit above enormous World War 2 bomb shelters cut from the rock, and one visit takes you through both.
Museum, Valletta. Meridian Dispatch.
About 45 minutes for the guided tour, which starts on the hour. Allow 60 to 90 minutes for the whole visit, including the time underground.
The official website takes reservations for a place on a visit. Guided tours start on the hour, so a missed start means waiting for the next one.
As of November 2026, the house opens Monday to Saturday from 10:00 to 17:00. It is closed all day on Sundays, and last admission is at 16:00.
The rooms, yes, by lift, and the house suggests contacting it in advance. The shelters, no: they are not recommended for wheelchair users or anyone with mobility or vision issues.
Yes. The house has a B&B, with details on the official website, linked from the home page alongside the palace, the shelters under it and the garden.
The 9th Marquis de Piro and his family. The de Piro family owns the palace, which is their ancestral home, and has lived in Valletta for almost 350 years.
Guided tours are normally given in clear spoken English. Audio tours on a visitor's own smartphone are available in French, Italian, Spanish and German, and printed scripts cover several more languages.
Usually, yes. The house opens on most public holidays, but the hours change from one holiday to the next. It posts each holiday's opening times on its social media, so a holiday visit is best checked there on the day.
The official site of Casa Rocca Piccola is casaroccapiccola.com.
casaroccapiccola.com →Furniture, silver and paintings from Malta and Europe fill the Piano Nobile, the grand upper floor, where the guided tour runs. The Sala Grande, a red drawing room, sets antique Maltese pieces around 16th-century portraits of the family.
Guides point out small objects as you go. An 18th-century golden sedan chair was once carried around Valletta by Turkish slaves. Glass tumblers held ice that had to be rowed from Mount Etna in Sicily.
Other rooms include the Summer and Winter Dining Rooms, the Porphyry Room, a library, the family chapel and an archive of the family's papers.
Below the house are two wells, part of the original quarry used to build the palace. Both were converted into bomb shelters during the war, and you can go right inside them. The larger of the two also served as a chapel, with over 100 people crammed inside during air raids.
Water was scarce in Valletta, which made gardens a great luxury, and houses there were normally not allowed one. Old maps of Valletta name this palace "la casa con giardino", the house with the garden.
The garden has orange trees and a statue called Effervescence that has stood there for over a hundred years. It is also home to a red-eared terrapin called April and a blue and gold macaw, Kiku III, the third macaw the family has owned in recent years.
Walk from City Gate along Republic Street, Valletta's main pedestrian street, to number 74. Taxis can stop outside.
Inside the door, stone steps and then marble ones lead up to the Piano Nobile. A lift reaches the same floor from the entrance at 53 St Dominic Street: ask at reception and someone will take you there. You then walk the suite of rooms at a leisurely pace.
From there you go down into the shelters. If the weather is good, you can also sit and rest in the garden.
Kiku loves company and having his photo taken, so wave and talk to him when you reach the garden.
Entry is free for under-14s.
If you drive, the house recommends parking on Valletta's ring road or, failing that, the MCP car park near the Bus Terminus.
Stay in Valletta and two harbours are a short walk from your bed: the Barrakka Lift takes you down to the Grand Harbour for the ferry to the Three Cities, and on the other side of the city the Sliema ferry crosses Marsamxett.
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