Inquisitor's Palace

Birgu — the oldest of Malta's Three Cities, known in English as Vittoriosa — was the Knights of St. John's first fortified base after their arrival in Malta in 1530, predating Valletta by nearly four decades. The town's Collacchio quarter, originally reserved for the Knights' senior officials, contains some of the densest historic fabric in the archipelago: Baroque doorways, medieval street plans, and buildings that have been continuously inhabited since the Crusader period. In a courtyard on the Collacchio's principal street stands the building that became the seat of the Roman Inquisition in Malta — a function it held from 1574 to 1798, outlasting by 52 years the very Knights whose criminal courts the building had originally housed.

The building's pre-Inquisition history is equally interesting. The structure was originally used as the criminal tribunal of the Knights of St. John, the judicial body that handled serious offences within the Order's territory. When the Roman Inquisition established its Maltese tribunal in 1574 — a response to the Protestant Reformation's spread and the need to monitor Malta's religiously diverse population of sailors, traders, and Ottoman prisoners of war — it took over this judicial building as its permanent seat. The conversion was relatively straightforward: the tribunal chamber became the Inquisition's formal hearing room, the Inquisitor moved into the upper apartments, and the building's existing prison cells were repurposed for the institution's detainees.

The Inquisition's Malta operation ran for 224 years, serving 64 different Inquisitors — a posting that was typically one stage in a longer Vatican career. Two Inquisitors went on to become popes: Fabio Chigi (Inquisitor 1634–1639, later Pope Alexander VII) and Antonio Pignatelli (Inquisitor 1646–1652, later Pope Innocent XII). The institution's records are among the best-preserved inquisitorial archives in the Mediterranean; the palace's prison cells still carry the graffiti left by those held here — names, dates, religious symbols, prayers, and casual inscriptions scratched into the limestone by people with nothing to do while awaiting examination.

The GYG Birgu walking tour (t621189) approaches the Inquisitor's Palace as the headline stop in a 3-hour circuit of Birgu's historic quarter. The guide covers the Couvre Porte gate — the monumental city gate at Birgu's landward entrance — Victory Square (formerly known as Piazza della Catena, centre of the Three Cities' community life and site of a WWII memorial), the Vittoriosa waterfront with its views back to Valletta across the Grand Harbour, and the winding Collacchio streets, before the group enters the Inquisitor's Palace with entrance confirmed included. The tour is flagged 'Likely to sell out' on GYG — advance booking is recommended.