Malta historical timeline

Malta's history is the record of who held the harbours. What a visitor sees -- the temples, the walled capital, the bastions, the bombed and rebuilt harbour towns -- is the trace of each holder in stone, and the islands have kept more of it than their size suggests.

Chronology

1. 3600 BC The megalithic temples are built across three periods to about 2500 BC: Ġgantija on Gozo, Ħaġar Qim, Mnajdra, Ta' Ħaġrat, Skorba and Tarxien on Malta. They are among the oldest free-standing structures in the world, and the Ħal Saflieni Hypogeum, cut underground in the same age, was found only in 1902.
2. c. 60 A.D. Saint Paul is shipwrecked on the island of Melite, which many biblical scholars identify with Malta, in an episode dated to around this year. Whether or not the identification holds, Malta has built on it for two thousand years: it is why the island is so densely churched, why the feast calendar is what it is, and why the bay on the north coast is called St Paul's Bay.
3. 870 Aghlabid forces under Halaf al-Hādim besiege the Byzantine city of Melite and take the islands, which had been Byzantine since the 6th century. Arab historians agree the island was left "a ruin without inhabitants" afterwards, which is why Maltese is a Semitic language written in the Latin alphabet.
4. 1091 Count Roger I of Sicily invades and makes the island's Muslim rulers his vassals; after an uprising in 1122 his son Roger II reconquers the islands in 1127 and Norman rule is fully established. Muslims continued to dominate Malta demographically and economically for at least another 150 years, so the Christianisation a visitor sees completed in stone was a slow process, not a switch.
5. 1530 On 23 March, Charles V gives the islands to the Knights Hospitaller. Mdina, the capital until their arrival, gives way to the harbour, and the Order rules for 268 years.
6. 1565 The Great Siege: the Ottoman Empire attempts to take the islands and is repelled after nearly four months, from 18 May to 8 September. The victory makes Malta's name in Europe.
7. 1566 On 28 March Grand Master de Valette lays the foundation stone of Valletta, a fortress capital planned in one campaign on the peninsula between the harbours.
8. 1798 Napoleon captures Malta on his way to Egypt and the Knights' reign ends. After a few months of French rule the Maltese rebel and blockade the garrison in the harbour towns.
9. 1800 General Vaubois surrenders the French garrison, and British rule -- confirmed by treaty in 1814 -- begins a period of 164 years. The dockyards, the letterboxes, the driving on the left and the English that every Maltese person speaks all date from here.
10. 1919 On 7 June, riots over the cost-of-living crisis that followed the First World War are suppressed by British troops, who kill four people. Sette Giugno is a national holiday, and the date marks the point at which Maltese opinion turned against colonial rule -- useful to know before reading any Maltese account of the British century.
11. 1940 The siege of Malta runs from June 1940 to November 1942, with the air and naval forces of Italy and Germany against the Royal Air Force and the Royal Navy in the Second World War. Rommel warned in May 1941 that "Without Malta the Axis will end by losing control of North Africa". The Luftwaffe and the Regia Aeronautica flew some 3,000 bombing raids over two years and dropped 6,700 tons of bombs on the Grand Harbour area alone, which is why the harbour towns are largely post-war and the war rooms cut into the rock below Valletta are open to visitors.
12. 1942 In the Second World War the islands are among the most intensively bombed areas anywhere. On 15 April King George VI awards the George Cross to Malta collectively; it is on the flag and coat of arms today.
13. 1964 Malta becomes independent as a Commonwealth realm, and in 1974 a republic within the Commonwealth. The defence agreement with Britain expires on 31 March 1979, kept as Freedom Day; the last British forces leave the next day.
14. 2004 Malta joins the European Union, and the eurozone in 2008. In 1980 UNESCO had already inscribed three sites -- Valletta, the Hypogeum and the megalithic temples -- on the World Heritage List.

What survived, and how

The temples survived by being buried and ignored; the Hypogeum by being unknown until a workman's pick went through its roof. Valletta survived the bombing because it was built to survive a siege, and St John's Co-Cathedral is the Knights' church still. Mdina survived by being abandoned as a capital in 1530 and never growing past its walls.

The harbour towns did not. The Three Cities and the dockyards were rebuilt after 1945 by the people who had sheltered under them, and the George Cross on the flag is the memory of that.