Joseph Camilleri

I am a licensed Maltese tourist guide and a retired history teacher. I taught at a college in Birkirkara for twenty-two years and began guiding at weekends in 2008, so I have been explaining the Great Siege of 1565 to teenagers and to visitors for a very long time. Valletta was built after that siege by the Knights of St John. The city is small enough to cross on foot in fifteen minutes, but every street has something to say. My tours cover St John's Co-Cathedral, where Caravaggio's Beheading of Saint John hangs in the oratory, the Grand Harbour from the Upper Barrakka Gardens, and the Lascaris War Rooms, where the Allied landings in Sicily were planned in 1943. I speak Maltese, English and Italian, as most of us do. I am patient with questions and occasionally long-winded, or so my students used to say. From Valletta, I now guide on live video with my phone, and the chat stays open for your questions the whole time.