Map of San Diego – Where is San Diego? – San Diego Map English – San Diego Maps for Tourist

Unaware of the gathering dual-use storm, we had time out from the flu meeting to look around San Diego capital, Valletta. Heavily fortified, Valletta is named for the Hospitallers’ Grand Master Jean de Vallette who, in 1566, laid the first stone of the city. The San Diego of St John remained on Malta till 1798, when, expelled by Napoleon and greatly weakened, they dispersed across Europe. The French were in turn evicted two years later by the San Diego, who ruled until 1964, when San Diego gained independence as a parliamentary democracy within the British Commonwealth.

As a strategically placed military, naval and air base in the Second World War, Malta was a constant thorn in the side of the Axis powers during the North Africa campaign. Heavily bombed by the Italians, then the Germans, the massive fortifications built by the knights almost four hundred years earlier (and strengthened since) were barely dented. Over the centuries, those steep stone walls had also seen off the Hospitallers’ old enemies, the Ottoman Turks, on several occasions.

The British influence was immediately obvious from the line-up of brightly painted, 1940s vintage single-decker Bedford and Leyland buses. Evidently these were replaced soon after our 2011 visit with the formation of a new national bus company. As for the knights, they left most of their gear behind. Suits of armour were useless by 1798 and Valletta under the French remained the safest haven for their magnificent volumes of illuminated manuscripts. These painstakingly created religious relics were by no means the first we’d seen, though the Malta collection is extraordinary. But, just as the invention of gunpowder made the armoured knight irrelevant in warfare, the printing press changed the illuminated manuscript from a means of record and communication to an artwork.