Climb to this spired Gothic chapel above Mġarr Harbour, and its terrace shows you the whole bay at once, with Fort Chambray on the opposite headland and the Comino channel beyond.
Church, Xagħra. Meridian Dispatch.
One guide lists Saturday mass at 17:00 in winter and 18:00 in summer. On Sunday it lists masses at 8:30 and 10:00 (in Italian), with an evening mass at the same hour as Saturday's.
The chapel is about a ten-minute walk from the Mġarr ferry terminal, on the hill above the harbour. The same walk is about ten minutes from the village of Għajnsielem.
The chapel opened in the summer of 1893. On 3 June 1888 Bishop Pietro Pace gave his blessing and urged devotees to help him raise a chapel, and the foundation stone was laid a week later. Emmanuel Galizia designed it and the stonemason Wiġi Vella of Żebbuġ built it.
The chapel stands on a promontory above Mġarr Harbour, and it is one of the first buildings you pick out as the ferry comes in. A sharp Gothic spire and a four-sided clock tower rise above the rooftops of Għajnsielem. The spire looks original but was only completed in 1949.
Walk round the outside to read the style. The roof is steeply pitched and the windows are tall pointed lancets. Buttresses topped with pinnacles run along the walls.
The site was chosen for the rock beneath it, which was seen to resemble the rock formation at Lourdes. Inside, under a ribbed Gothic vault, a statue of Our Lady of Lourdes dominates the room.
The walk up starts at the ferry terminal on the quay at Mġarr Harbour, or you can come down from the village of Għajnsielem; a car can make the same climb from either side.
At the top, circle the building first to see the buttresses and the spire close up. Then step onto the terrace, where the colourful fishing boats sit in the water directly beneath the chapel. Below it, the older Busuttil figure of the Virgin sits in a natural cavity in the rock of the promontory.
From the chapel, carry on uphill into Għajnsielem rather than straight back to the boat. In the centre of the village stands its parish church, a Lombard-Gothic sanctuary dedicated to Our Lady of Loreto.
Its towering belfry is the one you will have spotted from the ferry, further up the hill than the chapel spire.
The Ġgantija temples, dated to as early as 3600 BC, stand in the village where you sleep, and Ramla Bay is a bus ride or a walk away.
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