There's one colour you never forget: the turquoise of Comino's Blue Lagoon. On this almost uninhabited islet between Malta and Gozo, the sea forms a shallow cove over a bed of brilliant white sand, and the water takes on a luminous, almost Caribbean turquoise that looks retouched but is real. Swimming there, with the pale rock below and fish in plain sight, is one of the most sought-after experiences in Malta, and rightly so: few places in the Mediterranean have water like this.
But Comino is much more than its famous lagoon. It's a tiny, wild island with no cars or villages, declared a nature reserve, criss-crossed by trails through fragrant scrub, with hidden coves, sea caves for snorkelling and an imposing 17th-century watchtower keeping an eye on the channel. Behind its quiet beauty lies a curious history: it was a prison for unruly knights, a quarantine station to stop epidemics, a refuge for a medieval Jewish mystic and even a set for Hollywood films.
This guide covers Comino with a practical, honest eye: how to get there by boat, how much it costs and, very importantly, how to avoid the crowds that in high summer can ruin the Blue Lagoon, with hundreds of people packed together. Also where to go to escape them: the Crystal Lagoon, the coves of Santa Marija and San Niklaw, the tower and the trails. A little piece of paradise that you need to know how to visit, and hopefully look after, so it stays that way.
Despite its size, Comino has a rich history. Its name comes from cumin (kemmun), the spice that grew on the island. In the Middle Ages it was a place of retreat and refuge: around 1285 the Jewish mystic and Kabbalist Abraham Abulafia lived here in exile and wrote some of his works on the island. Under the Knights of St John, Comino was a hunting reserve and a strategic point against corsairs: in 1618 Grand Master Alof de Wignacourt built Santa Marija Tower, the fifth of his coastal towers, garrisoned by about 30 soldiers; it also served as a prison for punished knights. During the British period, in the 19th century, Comino served mainly as a quarantine station, where ships and travellers spent weeks in isolation to keep epidemics from reaching Malta and Gozo, and later as an isolation hospital. Today the island is a nature reserve and its permanent population comes down to a handful of people. The full history of Comino, its knights and its quarantines is on our history page.
Read the full history ↓The sister islands: greener, more rural Gozo, with the prehistoric temple of Ġgantija and the Citadel of Victoria, and the almost untouched islet of Comino.
Read the history of Gozo and Comino →If you only have one day, take a guided tour on the first one: it sets up the rest of your trip and saves you a lot of walking. We look ours up on Civitatis: guided in Spanish and booked online with no fuss. There are not many in Comino, but the ones there are worth it. Tap the cards below and have a look.
If you book from here we earn a commission and you pay no more. Prices and availability come from Civitatis.
No exact prices: a scale from $ (budget) to $$$$$ (luxury), with 2-3 options per category.
Origins, formation and what the sources say.
Between the two big islands of the archipelago, Malta and Gozo, floats a tiny, almost empty scrap of land: Comino. Barely three and a half square kilometres of limestone, scrubland and coves, with no villages, no cars and, today, only a handful of permanent residents. Its name comes from a plant: cumin (kemmun in Maltese), the aromatic spice that once grew wild on the island and has given it its identity since ancient times.
For most of its history, Comino was a marginal and dangerous place. Its position, right in the channel between Malta and Gozo, made it strategic but exposed: shipping routes passed through there, and so did the corsairs and pirates who plagued the Mediterranean. With hardly anyone living there to defend it, the island was both a potential hideout for raiders and a natural lookout for keeping watch on them. That double role would shape much of its past.
Isolated, dry and hard to live on, Comino never had a settled village or a large community. Depending on the era, it was a refuge for hermits and mystics, a hunting ground for nobles, a prison for knights, a quarantine station and, finally, a nature reserve. Its story is that of a small islet that, despite its size, gathered some surprising chapters, a far cry from the postcard-paradise image it is known for around the world today.
One of the most unusual episodes in Comino's history took place in the Middle Ages, and its main character is a Jewish thinker. Around 1285, the philosopher, kabbalist and mystic Abraham Abulafia, born in Zaragoza and a controversial figure in medieval Judaism, took refuge on Comino after years of travel, persecution and controversy, including a daring trip to Rome intending to meet the pope.
In exile on this remote islet in the central Mediterranean, Abulafia found in its solitude the right setting for writing. On Comino he composed some of his works, among them Sefer ha-Ot ('The Book of the Sign') and his last known work, Imre Shefer ('Words of Beauty'). His mysticism, based on combining the letters of the Hebrew alphabet and on contemplative techniques for reaching prophetic experience, had a notable influence on later kabbalistic tradition.
That a thinker of his stature chose, or was forced, to live on such a small and remote islet says a lot about Comino's character throughout history: a place of retreat, isolation and silence, on the margins of the world. In a way, the mystic's refuge foreshadowed the island's later uses as a place of confinement and separation, whether for punished knights or for travellers in quarantine.
When the Order of St John ruled Malta (1530-1798), Comino became part of its defensive system and, at the same time, a hunting ground. The Grand Masters valued the islet for hunting hares and birds, and even imposed harsh penalties on anyone who hunted there without permission. But its most important use was military: watching the channel between Malta and Gozo, a route corsairs could slip through to attack either island.
To that end, in 1618 Grand Master Alof de Wignacourt ordered a sturdy watchtower built on Comino, Santa Marija Tower, completed around 1620. It was the fifth of the so-called Wignacourt towers, a network of coastal forts that communicated with fire and smoke signals. Garrisoned by about thirty soldiers, the tower could raise the alarm when enemy ships appeared and harass, with its artillery, any corsairs trying to use the channel or land.
Under the Order, Comino also had a darker use: it served as a prison. In the 16th and 17th centuries, some knights punished for serious offences served their sentences here, isolated on the islet, sometimes for three years, with the dangerous task of helping fend off pirates. Confinement and danger came together in a posting few wanted. So the same island that was a pleasure ground for some was punishment and frontier for others, always marked by its loneliness and its exposure to the sea.
With the arrival of British rule in Malta (1800-1964), Comino found a new role in keeping with its remote character: a quarantine station. In the 19th century, when epidemics such as cholera and plague terrified Mediterranean ports, the island became a health checkpoint to protect Malta and Gozo from contagion.
Ships and travellers wanting to reach the archipelago, especially those coming from places suspected of epidemics, first had to spend a period of isolation on Comino, which could last from a few days to several weeks. Only after getting through that preventive confinement without showing symptoms were they allowed to continue to the main islands. With its tower and a few buildings, the island worked as a health frontier, a buffer between the outside world and the Maltese population.
Later on, Comino remained tied to the idea of isolation: it was used as an isolation hospital for contagious patients and, in hard times, even as a winter shelter for livestock. It was never an island of thriving, populous life, but a place of transit, confinement and protection. That long history of quarantine and isolation, of mystics, prisoners and the sick, contrasts almost ironically with its present as a mass tourism destination, where thousands of people crowd its turquoise waters in summer.
In the 20th century, with quarantines no longer in use, Comino was left practically uninhabited. A small number of farmers worked its fields for decades, but the population kept shrinking to a handful of people; today its permanent residents can be counted on one hand. The island, almost free of buildings, kept its wild character, and that became its new value.
Comino was declared a nature reserve and bird sanctuary and included in the European Natura 2000 network for its botanical and ornithological importance: it is a refuge for seabirds and a stopover for migratory species, and its scrubland is home to Mediterranean plants such as thyme and the cumin that gives the island its name. Its rugged beauty, with no modern buildings, also drew filmmakers: the island and its tower served as a set for big productions such as 'The Count of Monte Cristo' (2002) and 'Troy' (2004), among others.
But the same landscape that made it famous also put it at risk. The Blue Lagoon, with its turquoise waters, became a tourist magnet on a global scale, and at the height of summer the islet receives thousands of visitors every day: hundreds of people packed into the inlet, dozens of boats at anchor, kiosks and sun loungers spreading over the rocks of a fragile nature reserve. Overcrowding and its impacts (litter, noise, pressure on the ecosystem) led the authorities to take action, such as limiting and regulating landings through a booking quota system introduced in 2025. Comino's challenge today is clear: how to share its paradise without destroying it. Visiting early, outside peak season, respectfully and without leaving a trace, is the best way to help this islet, a refuge for mystics, prisoners and the sick throughout history, remain a small Eden in the middle of the sea in the future too.
