Walking St Julian's Church Quarter from Lapsi to Balluta

Triq Lapsi and the two parish churches

Begin uphill in the old village. Il-Lapsi, the old parish church of St Julian (corner of Triq Lapsi and Triq Sant'Anġlu) is a small squat 17th-century chapel with a simple scrolled pediment and a single bell-cote, its honey-coloured globigerina walls worn smooth at the door. A chapel to St Julian the Hospitaller stood on this corner from 1580, when the land around it was hunting country for the Knights. It was rebuilt in 1593, then again by 1683, and it gave the bay its old name, Portus Sancti Juliani. Entry is free. The interior is tiny and holds a handful of people at a time. During the festa it still takes an early Sunday Mass.

Higher on the same street, St Julian's Parish Church (Triq Lapsi) stands above the rooftops of the old village, a tall pale-limestone church of the 1960s with pointed neo-gothic lancet windows and a slim bell tower. Washing lines and narrow streets drop away below it toward the sea. The first stone went down in 1961, to a design by Arturo Zammit, and the church was consecrated in 1978. Carlo Darmanin's titular statue of St Julian comes out onto the parvis each August, and in 2026 the feast fell on Sunday 30 August. Visits and services are free, and the doors are open daily. Keep quiet during Mass. A guided parish group should phone ahead.

The Spinola Bay waterfront

Walk back down to the water. The Chapel of the Immaculate Conception (Spinola Bay) is a compact baroque chapel with pilasters and a small belfry, a 1914 façade grafted onto a 1687 body, set just back from the waterfront beside the palace wall. Fra Paolo Raffaele Spinola laid its first stone on 16 June 1687 as the private chapel for his palace next door. That makes it the oldest standing building on the bay. It is Grade 1 listed, free, and open for services. The interior is small and it is easy to walk straight past.

Spinola Palace (Spinola Bay) is the palace it was built for, three storeys of honey limestone with a large sculpted clock under a carved crown set into the façade, floodlit at night. It was built in 1688 and enlarged in 1733 by Romano Carapecchia, reputedly the first secular baroque façade in Malta to make a clock its centrepiece. The interior is not open to the public. It is the seat of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Mediterranean, and the cellar restaurant is the only way inside. The walled terraced garden at the front reopened to the public in 2019 after decades shut, and some older guides still say it is closed. It is free to walk, with gravel paths running between mature trees and stone urns.

Spinola Bay and the Love Monument (Spinola Bay waterfront) sit below both. The inlet is a tight horseshoe packed with red, blue and yellow luzzu fishing boats, the painted eyes of Osiris at their bows, and terrace awnings run round the rim. It is still a working fishing harbour, and it was the heart of the old village. The waterfront is public and free at any hour, and it is the standard meeting point for walking groups. Richard England's sculpture went up in April 2003 and was loudly disliked at the time. It is now the image most people have of St Julian's. The queue at the letters builds at sunset, so take your photograph earlier in the day.

Balluta Bay

From the parish church it is a ten-minute walk along the seafront to Balluta. The Carmelite Church of Our Lady of Mount Carmel (Balluta) rises straight off the waterfront, neo-gothic twin towers in pale stone with pointed arches and a rose window, the triangular tree-shaded piazza and the bay in front of it. It began as a chapel in 1859, was rebuilt repeatedly, was wrecked in the WWII air raids and was given its present form in 1958. It became Balluta's parish church in 1974. Entry is free and it is open to the public outside service times.

Round the bay, Balluta Buildings (Balluta Bay) are three joined limestone blocks of 1928 by Giuseppe Psaila, with tall arched openings, flanking pilasters, pediments and floral-geometric relief. Look up at the keystones carved with putti. The blocks are Grade 1 listed, still lived in and visibly in need of restoration, and they are one of the few Art Nouveau buildings left in Malta. Only the exterior is open to you, from street level, free. The ground-floor shops and cafés take walk-ins.

Church Street and the Millennium Chapel

Millennium Chapel (Church Street) is an austere white modernist building by Richard England, blank curved stone planes with a slot of daylight over the altar. It was inaugurated in 2000 and put deliberately on the edge of Paceville, a quiet room next to the noise. The meditation garden behind it, 'The Word', was added in May 2018, a small walled space of stone and planting. Entry is free. Sunday Mass is said in English, with the hymn text on screens. Keep your visit low-key, because the chapel is run as a refuge.

Maltese kitchens

La Maltija (corner of Church Street) is a small family dining room in a scheduled old stone townhouse, low ceiling and close-packed tables, where a complimentary bowl of Maltese bread and bigilla lands before you order. The building is on Malta's national inventory, and the kitchen is one of the oldest Maltese kitchens on the island. Order the fenek, the stewed rabbit, which reviewers still single out in 2026. Prices are €€. Reserve, and warn them if you are more than six. It stands where the Church Quarter meets Paceville.

Gululu (133 Spinola Bay) puts its terrace on stilts directly over the luzzu boats, and hangs its rustic wooden interior with Maltese bric-a-brac and old island photographs. This is the kitchen for stuffat tal-qarnit, aljotta, fenek and ftira. Prices are €€. It opens evenings only from Monday to Thursday, then for lunch and dinner from Friday to Sunday. Reservations go through the phone or the website, and the waterfront terrace seats larger parties.

Fish, beef and the bay view

Barracuda Restaurant (194 Main Street) occupies a converted 18th-century limestone villa on a stone platform over Balluta Bay, with a wrap-around balcony and arched windows at water level. Whole fish come to the table on ice. The founding family ran it for 43 years before it changed hands, and it remains the quarter's special-occasion fish restaurant. Prices are €€€. Book ahead. It is set up for private parties, events and weddings alongside à la carte, which makes it the one address here that will take a whole group properly. Piccolo Padre, its cheaper sister pizzeria, is downstairs in the same building.

Wigi's Kitchen (Triq Censu Tabone) is an intimate family-run room a few steps off Balluta Bay, warm and low-lit, where raw cuts of beef and the day's whole fish are carried to your table on a board before cooking. The chateaubriand is what people come back for. Prices are €€€. The room is small and nearly always fully booked, so reserve well in advance. Parties of up to eight work here.

Peppino's (71 St George's Road) looks straight down the length of Spinola Bay from an upper-floor terrace, candlelit tables set against a stone balustrade and the Love Monument visible below. It has been on the bay for 24 years. Prices are €€€, and it serves until 00:00. Take the terrace at dusk. The position is the reason to come, and the food is solid. Larger bookings are seated with notice.

Saddles Pub and Hotel Juliani

Saddles Pub (Spinola Bay waterfront) has held its corner for more than 40 years, two floors with a pool table and dark wood downstairs and an upstairs bar opening onto a terrace over the harbour. Football runs on the big screens. It opens 09:00 to 03:00 daily, prices are €, and there is no door policy. It is a locals' pub rather than a Paceville club, and bigger parties end up on the upstairs terrace.

Hotel Juliani (Spinola Bay waterfront) is a renovated limestone townhouse on the waterfront with 44 rooms and a small rooftop pool and terrace bar looking over the luzzus and the bay's curve of lights. It was Malta's first boutique hotel. Prices are €€€. The rooftop bar is open to non-residents, and its restaurant, Zest, belongs to the same house. You step out of the front door onto Spinola Bay, and the parish church is uphill from there. Those 44 rooms will take a few friends booking together.

Hours and bookings

Gululu serves no lunch from Monday to Thursday, and both Wigi's Kitchen and Barracuda want a booking before you arrive. Every church and chapel here is free. The parish church is the one with conditions attached: guided groups phone ahead, and everyone keeps quiet during Mass.

See the St Julian's guide and the St Julian's hotel search.