Malta, because if its strategic position in the Mediterranean Sea has been a desirable prize for many centuries. It was given to the Knights Hospitaller of the Order of St John when the Turks drove them out of Rhodes. After the great siege of 1565, by the Turks, it was decided to greatly increase the fortifications on the island as Christian Europe was fearful that the Turks would capture the island and the Ottoman Empire would pose a greater threat to it than it had previosly done.

This is a picture of Valletta, taken from Fort St Angelo which is on the tip of Vittoriosa.

Valletta across Grand Harbour from Fort St Angelo

In 1798 Napoleon captured Malta but made himself so unpopular there that the Maltese people staged an uprising and the French had to retreat behind the walls of Valletta. A Maltese deputation asked for help from the British and the island became a Crown Colony of Britain until its independence in 1964.

This is one of the legacies left behind by the British. It is an 100-ton muzzle loading gun and was the largest muzzle-loading gun ever constructed. It is capable of hurling a 907kg shell for over 6,000 metres and is at the Rinella Battery.

Yes, it really is  pink.

The fortifications around Valletta are so vast that except for certain places in the city one does not notice them at all.

The position from which I mostly noticed them was just outside the City Gate, between the bastions of St John and St James which loomed large on each side of the bridge from the gate over the great ditch to the bus station in Floriana.

This is St John's Bastion ... If you look carefully you can see a lady, dressed in yellow, standing at the top.

... and this is St James' Bastion with trees growing in the Great Ditch.

The curtain wall leading from St John's Bastion to the City Gate. It is badly weathered.

The city itself is, for the most part, on top of the fortifications as it is built along the spine of Mt Sciberras with the city walls rising up from the harbours on both sides of the Sciberras peninsular.

From my hotel window Fort St Angelo, across the harbour in Vittoriosa, was very prominent. The bastions on the landward side of the three cities (Senglea, Vittorioso and Conspicua) are most noticable only from outside the cities.

Fort St Angelo, looking across Grand Harbour from Valletta

The citadels at Mdina, the old capital city of Malta, and Victoria on Gozo are sited at the top of hills and stand out as one approaches.

This is the Citadel on Gozo

A walk around the walls of these citadels gives a very good idea of the strength and thickness of the fortifications. My daughter and I walked around the walls of the citadels at Mdina and Gozo where, as with Valletta, the views were wonderful.

I was unable to see inside Fort St Elmo which is on the tip of the Sciberras peninsular but a garden growing there is visible from the street.

Garden within Fort St Elmo.

We were able to explore a certain amount of Fort St Angelo which has been polluted by the remains of a "holiday village" which was begun as a government undertaking in the 1980s and never finished. The remains consist primarily of rows of what appears to be tiled bathrooms which are in a seriously delapidated condition. I understand that plans are afoot to remove them as soon as it is practicable.

The landward face of Fort St Angelo and the water-filled ditch which protects it from land attack.

I walked widdershins around the walls of Valletta as part of my plan to get to know my way around the city. The walk took me about an hour but I think that I took a wrong turning somewhere - I ended up behind the Hotel Phoenicia in Floriana. Next time I shall do the walk in a clockwise direction and find out where I went wrong.