Submit a photo
Submit a photo
Ninety seconds on MUŻA
Yes. Heritage Malta sells reduced tickets for senior citizens aged 60 and over, youths aged 12 to 17, concessions and students, and children aged 6 to 11. Infants aged 1 to 5 enter free, as do Heritage Malta members and Heritage Malta Passport holders.
Allow one to two hours to follow the route from the first-floor archaeology through the Renaissance and Baroque rooms and up to the second floor. With less time, give most of it to the Baroque galleries and Preti's canvases.
Travel guides list a café at the museum. Heritage Malta lists a gift shop, an indoor and outdoor seating area and a nappy changing facility on site. Guided tours can be requested through its MUŻA page, which also links to tickets and the opening hours.
Inside Malta's national art museum you meet the largest collection of Mattia Preti's paintings, in galleries that run from Neolithic finds to Maltese art of the early 21st century.
The name is an acronym of Mużew Nazzjonali tal-Arti, Maltese for national museum of art, and a nod to the Muses of Classical Antiquity. Heritage Malta brands it a National Community Art Museum.
The building is the Auberge d'Italie, a late-16th-century house put up for the Italian knights of the Order of St John.
Baroque painting dominates the galleries. The leading name is Mattia Preti (1613 to 1699), a Southern Italian Baroque artist who was also a knight of the Order. Around his canvases hang works of art from the 15th century onwards, so you can follow Maltese painting room by room.
The displays also tell the story of the national collection itself and the values that shaped it over time.
Merchant Street has the main entrance, at ground level, a short walk from City Gate and Upper Barrakka Gardens. Heritage Malta sells tickets online, and lockers are available on site.
Take the main staircase to the first floor, where the route begins with Neolithic, Punic, Roman, Arab and Early Medieval artefacts. Renaissance works follow, many of them reaching Malta through Sicily.
From there the Baroque rooms take over, and the same staircase carries on to the second floor, where the later galleries continue the sequence.
Pair MUŻA with St John's Co-Cathedral on the same day. See the cathedral first, where Preti's work decorates the interior, then come here for his canvases.
Afterwards, Merchant Street suits an unhurried hour with a café stop and some shopping before you head on.
Explore the rest of Valletta
Cannons, a carved stone portal and a coat of arms fill the baroque front of this auberge, now the office of the Prime Minister. The…
Arched loggias on the highest tier of the bastions frame a full view across the Grand Harbour to Birgu, Senglea and Fort St Angelo. Entry…
Behind a plain, almost military facade, every surface of the interior is carved, gilded or painted, and the floor is a patchwork of around…
On most days a crew in period uniform loads and fires a cannon from the gun platform below Upper Barrakka, at noon and at 4pm. Firings are…
Glass cars climb the face of the bastion between Upper Barrakka Gardens and the wharf below, saving the long walk up the stepped streets.…
Founded in 1776, the Bibliotheca keeps the archives of the Order of St John in a neoclassical building on Republic Square. It is a working…
Three bronze tritons hold up a wide basin in the middle of the plaza outside City Gate, beside the bus terminus. Restored in 2018, the…
The restored State Rooms, under Baroque painted ceilings and over marble floors, and the Palace Armoury, with its suits of armour and…
Last updated