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Ninety seconds on Old Prison
Between March and December the Old Prison opens Tuesday to Sunday, 9:00 to 17:00, with last admission at 16:30. In January and February it opens on Tuesday and from Thursday to Sunday, so it is shut on Mondays and Wednesdays. Further closures fall on Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, New Year's Eve, New Year's Day and Good Friday.
Yes. The Ċittadella ticket gives one admission each to the Old Prison, the Gran Castello Historic House and the Citadel Visitor Centre. Youths, seniors, students and children pay a reduced rate.
The best-known inmate is Fra Jean Parisot de La Valette, later Grand Master of Malta, who spent four months here in 1538 after attacking a man.
From the centre of Victoria, the island's capital, it is about an eight-minute walk up to the Citadel. The prison stands on Cathedral Square, inside the walls, so no transport is needed once in town.
Only partly. Heritage Malta rates the site as partially accessible, with three steps at the main entrance, and inside a narrow corridor leads to all the cells.
Prisoners engraved them with hard, sharp objects such as bone points, cutlery or pointed stones. The marks include ships, palm prints, crosses, names, dates and games.
The walls of Gozo's oldest surviving prison still carry the marks its inmates scratched into the stone over centuries: sailing ships, names, crosses, dates and games. Step inside a cell to see the space one prisoner was kept in.
The Old Prison holds the largest known collection of historical graffiti in one place on the Maltese Islands. Prisoners incised their marks on the corridor walls as well as in the cells, so look along the passage, not only inside.
Read the names among the drawings, since some inmates are known from the signatures they left here. Heritage Malta, which runs the site, dates the prison's use from the mid-16th century to the early 20th.
In the entrance hall, look for a 16th-century carrack graffito of a sailing ship, shown with casts of other carvings. The hall also keeps objects from prison life, among them the surviving part of a set of wooden stocks.
The reception desk inside the main door sells the ticket. This entrance hall served as a communal cell in the 19th century, and besides the carrack and the casts it holds a permanent exhibition on fortifications and a small gift shop.
From the hall, cross to the free-standing block of six individual cells. A corridor runs past them, and you can step inside one to study the marks at close range.
When you leave, walk the ramparts for the views, then use the rest of your ticket at the Gran Castello Historic House before heading back down into town.
Arriving by bus, get off at Victoria's main bus station and walk uphill to the Cittadella. Inside the walls, the prison is a short stroll away, near the law courts and the cathedral.
Members of Heritage Malta and holders of its Passport get in free. Before you leave the entrance hall, take a photo in the stocks.
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