Malta's Instagram spots: the ones already wrecked

The Azure Window is gone. You already know that

The Azure Window — the limestone arch at Dwejra in Gozo that appeared in Game of Thrones, in a thousand Instagram travel accounts, in Visit Malta campaigns for two decades — collapsed into the sea in a storm in March 2017. The photograph exists only in the past now. The Instagram posts tagged @Dwejra still go up, because the location is still beautiful and the broken arch still creates interesting compositions, but the arch itself is gone.

This is the sharpest version of a broader problem: Malta’s most photographed places have, in many cases, been photographed to death, or are on their way there. The images that bring people to these locations are often more than a decade old — taken before the crowds, before the commercial pressure, before the tourism volumes reached their current levels. The reality on the ground has diverged from the archive.

Here’s an honest December 2022 assessment of Malta’s most-photographed spots, and what to do about each one.

The spots, and the honest current status

Blue Lagoon (Comino) — badly overcrowded in summer

The turquoise water is real. The photographs are real. What the photographs don’t show: on a Tuesday in August 2022, there were an estimated 3,000 people on and around Blue Lagoon, including sun loungers covering every inch of the adjacent shore, three or four large boats moored alongside each other and grinding the water to a murky brown with their engines, and a single-use plastic situation that would distress any marine conservationist.

The Blue Lagoon is genuinely beautiful in the right conditions. The right conditions are: before 9am, after 5pm, or in the shoulder season (October-November). At 2pm on a summer Saturday, it is one of the most dispiriting places in the Mediterranean.

The alternative: Crystal Lagoon, which is around the small headland to the east of Blue Lagoon, is calmer and less visited. Or go to Comino in late October, when the ferry services have thinned and the island has reclaimed something of its actual character.

The Azure Window location (Dwejra, Gozo) — still worth visiting, but manage expectations

The photographs from before 2017 are everywhere, and they create an expectation that the current site cannot meet. What exists now at Dwejra is genuinely dramatic: the Inland Sea, the opening through the cliffs to the open water, the Blue Hole dive site, the rock formation where the arch used to be. It is a striking coastal landscape. It is not the Azure Window.

The collapse has paradoxically reduced visitor numbers slightly — people who came specifically for the arch photo often don’t know it’s gone. The ones who do go now tend to be divers (Blue Hole is one of the best sites in the Mediterranean) or people who know the site’s history.

The honest take: go to Dwejra. Manage your expectations about the arch. The landscape without the arch is still extraordinary.

Valletta coloured balconies (various streets) — heavily photographed but still rewarding

The photographs of Valletta’s brightly painted wooden balconies — in rows along the baroque streets, stacked in warm yellows and greens and blues — are probably the most reproduced Malta images after Blue Lagoon. The good news: they exist, they’re exactly as photogenic, and they haven’t been ruined.

The less good news: every street with particularly photogenic balconies has been catalogued and hashtagged, and on summer mornings these streets have a predictable queue of people waiting for the shot. Merchants Street, St Ursula Street, Archbishop Street — all beautiful, all documented to death.

The alternative: walk one block off the main balcony streets and find the side alleys that haven’t been catalogued. Old Bakery Street in the early morning. The streets in the lower part of the city near the waterfront, which get afternoon light that’s warmer than the morning version. Come before 8am in summer and the streets are genuinely quiet.

The salt pans at Marsalforn (Gozo) — increasingly crowded but still manageable

The pink-and-grey salt pans at Marsalforn in Gozo have become a standard item on the Gozo photography itinerary. They’re genuinely beautiful — geometric, ancient, the sea and the limestone behind them — and still worth seeing. The crowds are moderate rather than overwhelming.

The nuance: the salt pans look best in early morning (the light is warm from the east, the water has a metallic quality), and in October-November when the harvest season gives the pans more texture. In July they’re bleached and flat in the midday sun, and the tour buses go through between 11am and 2pm.

The honest take: this one is fine. Go in the morning, go in autumn, go without the tour group timing.

The Three Cities (Birgu, Senglea, Cospicua) — still genuinely under-visited

The view from the Senglea watchtower — across the Grand Harbour to Valletta, the full sweep of the fortifications — is one of the great views of the Mediterranean. It appears in photographs. But the Three Cities as a whole remain genuinely less visited than their quality deserves.

The honest take: this is one of the few cases where the Instagram-famous view undersells the reality. Visit the Three Cities. Take the ferry from Valletta (€1.50, 10 minutes, unmissable view of the Grand Harbour). Walk the streets of Birgu. The photographs can’t quite capture what it actually feels like.

Popeye Village — accurately photographed, honestly a tourist attraction

Popeye Village in Mellieha was built as a film set for the 1980 Popeye musical and converted into a family attraction. It is exactly as colourful and slightly odd as the photographs suggest. It is also exactly as commercial and theme-park as the photographs suggest, if you know how to read them.

It’s a legitimate place to visit with children. It’s not a hidden gem or an undiscovered corner of Maltese culture. The photographs that present it as a quirky off-beat discovery are doing the thing photographs do — removing context.

The honest take: worth visiting with kids, or for the curious adult who wants to see a real film set that’s been running as an attraction for 40 years. Go in knowing exactly what it is.

What the Instagram problem actually means

The broader point here is not that Malta’s most-photographed places are bad. Most of them are genuinely beautiful. The problem is the gap between the image and the experience.

The image is timeless: no crowds, perfect light, perfect weather. The experience is contingent: sometimes it matches, often it doesn’t, and the disparity is highest in peak season at the most famous locations.

Malta is a place with a hundred other beautiful locations that haven’t been fed through the algorithm yet. The photographs don’t exist of them because not enough people have been there. Dingli Cliffs at sunset. The back streets of Mdina in winter mist. The salt pans at dawn. The Senglea safe-harbour watchtower in the late afternoon with the Grand Harbour going gold below it.

These places are real, accessible, and not yet arranged by the collective attention of millions of tagged posts. Go before they are.

The full guide to getting around without the crowds has specific timing and alternative suggestions for the most pressured sites.