What is the capital of Malta?

Valletta was built as a fortress after a siege. In 1565 the Knights of St John held out against a massive Ottoman assault, and the grand master Jean de Valette, whose name the city carries, resolved to fortify the peninsula between the two great harbours so that the islands could never again be so nearly lost. Engineers laid out a planned city on a grid across the rocky spine, ringed with bastions and ditches cut from the limestone, complete with a water supply and a hospital, which made it one of the most deliberately designed cities of its era. Because the grid runs across a ridge, several streets descend in long flights of steps. The compact peninsula is packed with baroque churches and palaces, including St John's Co-Cathedral with its Caravaggio, and the whole city is inscribed as a World Heritage site.

Malta's position in the middle of the Mediterranean made it strategically valuable to every power that could reach it, from Phoenicians to the British.