Crossing the short channel between Malta and Gozo means changing pace. Gozo is smaller, greener and quieter than its big sister. It has terraced fields, golden-stone villages crowned by huge churches, and a way of life that still moves slowly. At its exact centre, on a hill you can see from half the island, stands Victoria, the capital, beneath the walled silhouette of the Ċittadella. Climbing up to the citadel and looking out from its walls, with all of Gozo spread out 360 degrees to the sea, is one of the great moments of any trip to Malta.
The Ċittadella is a small world of its own: a maze of stone lanes, cisterns and bastions that have protected Gozitans for millennia. There is a baroque cathedral with a dome that doesn't exist (it's painted as an optical illusion), old prisons covered in inmates' graffiti, and house-museums. This hill isn't just pretty, it's memory. The people of Gozo took refuge here in 1551, when the corsair Dragut and the Ottoman fleet attacked the island. They deported almost all its inhabitants as slaves, a trauma that marked the Gozitans forever.
This guide takes a practical, friendly look at Victoria. It covers how to take the ferry to Gozo and get to the capital, and what to see in the Ċittadella and its museums. It explains how to visit the cathedral and the dazzling St George's Basilica, and when to drop by the It-Tokk market. It also shows how to use Victoria as a base for discovering the Ġgantija temple, the beaches and the island's villages. It's the small capital of a small island, with an enormous history carved in stone.
The Ċittadella hill has been inhabited and fortified since prehistoric times. A Bronze Age settlement stood here, then a Phoenician and Punic acropolis, and later a Roman town, the Gaulos or Glauconis of antiquity. In the Middle Ages, the Castello became the refuge for the whole population of Gozo, who had to spend the night inside its walls for fear of corsairs. That fear came true in July 1551. The Ottoman fleet under Sinan Pasha, with the corsair Dragut as his second-in-command, besieged and took the citadel. Between 5.000 and 7.000 Gozitans, almost the entire island, were enslaved and deported to North Africa and Constantinople. Gozo was left empty and had to be resettled with families brought from Malta and Sicily. The Knights of St John later strengthened the walls. Under British rule the town, until then called Rabat, was renamed Victoria in 1897. The full history of the Ċittadella, the 1551 siege and the deportation 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.
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Origins, formation and what the sources say.
Right in the centre of Gozo there's a hill you can see from almost anywhere on the island. The Ċittadella stands on top of it. Its commanding position explains why people have lived, prayed and fought there for thousands of years. The story of Victoria is above all the story of this fortified hill, which has been lived on without a break since prehistoric times.
Excavations show there was already a settlement here in the Bronze Age, some three thousand years ago. Next came the Phoenicians and the Carthaginians, who turned the hilltop into an acropolis. After them came the Romans, who ruled a city known in antiquity as Gaulos or Glauconis, the capital of the small island they called Gaulos. In the Middle Ages a castle-refuge grew up on these ancient foundations: the Castello, the heart of Gozo.
For centuries the hill was more than the seat of power. It was quite literally where every Gozitan spent the night. Barbary and Ottoman corsairs were a constant danger, raiding across the Mediterranean and enslaving any Christian they found on the coast. Because of them, the island's population had to spend every night shut inside the walls of the Castello. By day people went down to work the fields, and at sunset they had to climb back up for safety. For generations this life of constant fear shaped Gozitan society, and it foreshadowed the tragedy that was still to come.
In the summer of 1551 the fear came true. In July that year a large Ottoman fleet of about 145 ships and some 10,000 men appeared off the Maltese islands. It was led by Admiral Sinan Pasha, with the dreaded corsair Dragut (Turgut Reis) as his second-in-command. The Ottomans first attacked Malta and raided the surrounding area without success. Then they threw their whole force against Gozo, which was almost defenceless.
As always, the people took refuge in the Castello. But its medieval walls were old and poorly armed, and they couldn't hold out against the Ottoman artillery. After barely two days of bombardment, Governor Galatian de Sesse surrendered on 26 July. The terms of surrender were rejected, and what followed was a catastrophe: almost everyone sheltering inside was taken prisoner. Between 5,000 and 7,000 Gozitans, the vast majority of the island's people, were loaded onto the ships and carried off as slaves to North Africa, and many of them to Constantinople.
Many of the adult men among the captives ended up rowing in the Ottoman galleys. Documents from the time mention Gozitan slaves in the Ottoman capital. Over the years some were ransomed or freed, others converted to Islam, and many died in captivity far from their island. Gozo was left almost empty, devastated and silent. It was one of the greatest tragedies in Maltese history, and Gozitans have kept its memory alive, passing it down from one generation to the next.
After the deportation of 1551, Gozo was almost a wasteland. The Knights of St John had ruled Malta since 1530, and Gozo belonged to them too. They had to repopulate the island, bringing in families from Malta and Sicily to farm the fields again and live in the villages. Recovery was slow and painful. For decades the corsair threat still hung over a small and frightened population.
The lesson of the disaster was clear: the defences had to be rebuilt. Through the 16th and 17th centuries, the Order strengthened and modernised the walls of the Castello. The old medieval fortress became a citadel built for artillery 'in the modern style', with bastions able to stand up to cannon fire. Much of the Ċittadella we see today comes from that work: a belt of golden walls on the hilltop, adapted to the age of gunpowder.
As the corsair danger faded over time, the rule about sleeping inside the walls was gradually relaxed. People began to settle for good in the suburb at the foot of the hill, the Rabat, which would grow into today's Victoria. Inside the walls, the new Baroque cathedral went up between 1697 and 1711. It was designed by the architect Lorenzo Gafà and stands where there had once been a Roman temple to Juno, and later a medieval church damaged in the 1551 attack. The citadel was no longer just a refuge. It had also become the religious and symbolic centre of Gozo.
For centuries the capital of Gozo was simply called Rabat, which in Arabic and Maltese means 'suburb', because it grew up at the foot of the Castello. The British brought the change of name. Malta and Gozo had come under British protection in 1800, after Napoleon's French were driven out, and in 1814 they formally became a Crown colony.
In 1897 the British authorities officially renamed the town Victoria to mark the diamond jubilee of Queen Victoria, her sixty years on the throne. The new name took hold in documents and on maps, but many Gozitans, especially older people, still call their capital Rabat today. So the town lives with two names: Victoria, the official British one, and Rabat, the historical and popular one.
British rule lasted until Malta's independence in 1964, and under it Victoria became firmly established as Gozo's capital. Public gardens such as Villa Rundle were laid out, a shopping centre grew up around It-Tokk square, and a lively cultural and festive life flourished. Ever since, two great parishes have kept up a famous festive rivalry: St Mary's, in the Ċittadella cathedral, and St George's, with its dazzling marble-and-gold basilica in the old town. Each has its band, its opera house (the Aurora and the Astra) and a spectacular summer feast for its patron saint, all the pride of the town.
Over time much of the Ċittadella, especially the northern part, was abandoned and fell into ruin as life moved for good to the Rabat below. For decades the old citadel was picturesque but run-down, full of half-collapsed houses and forgotten cisterns. That changed in recent decades thanks to an ambitious restoration project, partly funded by the EU. It shored up the walls, brought historic buildings back to life and created new museums and a modern visitor centre.
Today the Ċittadella is once again the symbolic heart of Gozo and its main sight. You can wander freely along its walls and narrow streets and visit the cathedral with its famous trompe-l'œil painted dome. There is also a group of museums covering archaeology and nature, the moving Old Prison with its prisoners' graffiti, and the Gozitan heritage house, which together tell thousands of years of island history. From the top, the 360-degree view over all of Gozo is as breathtaking as it was when this was the island's last refuge.
Gozo has just over 30,000 people. It keeps its own identity and a slower pace than Malta: greener, more rural and quieter, and proud of its traditions, its cheese, its feasts and its history. Victoria, its capital, with the Ċittadella crowning the hill, sums all of that up: the memory of the 1551 deportation, Baroque faith, the festive rivalry and everyday life at the It-Tokk market. A small town on a small island, with one of the most intense histories in the Mediterranean carved into its golden stone.
