28 Famous Maltese People: Artists, Chefs and Scientists

The most widely known Maltese people are Edward de Bono, who coined the term “lateral thinking”, the opera tenor Joseph Calleja, the Hollywood character actor Joseph Calleia and the singer Ira Losco. Behind them sits a long bench of painters, chefs, footballers and one archaeologist who worked out what was causing Malta fever. All 28 people below were checked for nationality, dates and what they are actually known for.

Malta is a small island nation in the Mediterranean with 588,254 residents at the end of 2025, according to the National Statistics Office, which makes it the smallest member state of the European Union by population. The country holds 3 UNESCO World Heritage Sites: the city of Valletta, the Ħal Saflieni Hypogeum and the Megalithic Temples of Malta, whose oldest stones predate the pyramids. A place that size produces fewer famous names than a large country, so the ones it does produce are known to almost everyone on the islands.

The 5 Maltese names travellers are most likely to recognise are listed below.

• Edward de Bono. Edward de Bono was a Maltese physician and author who coined the term “lateral thinking” and wrote 85 books, including Six Thinking Hats.
• Joseph Calleja. Joseph Calleja is a Maltese operatic tenor who has sung at the Metropolitan Opera, the Royal Opera House and the Vienna State Opera, and was made Malta’s first Cultural Ambassador in 2012.
• Ira Losco. Ira Losco is a Maltese pop singer who came second at the Eurovision Song Contest in 2002, still Malta’s joint-best result, and returned in 2016.
• Joseph Calleia. Joseph Calleia was a Maltese-born Hollywood actor who played villains from the 1930s to the 1950s, including in Orson Welles’s Touch of Evil.
• Sir Themistocles Zammit. Sir Themistocles Zammit was a Maltese doctor and archaeologist who identified goats’ milk as the carrier of Malta fever in 1905 and excavated the Hypogeum.

1. Jonathan Brincat

Jonathan Brincat is a Maltese chef who holds a Michelin star at Noni, his restaurant in Valletta. Brincat opened Noni in 2017 in a Valletta cellar that had previously been a private house, a jazz bar and a bakery, with his sister Ritienne running the dining room. The restaurant took its star in 2020, the year the Michelin Guide covered Malta for the first time.

His nickname is Noni, which is where the restaurant’s name comes from. The cooking is built on Maltese and Mediterranean tradition given a modern treatment, on a short menu that changes with the season. Noni still held its star in the 2026 Michelin Guide Malta, one of only 7 starred restaurants in the country.

2. Joseph Vella

Joseph Vella was a Maltese composer and conductor, and the most widely performed Maltese composer of his generation. Vella was born in Victoria, Gozo, on 9 January 1942 and died in 2018. He studied first with his father, was admitted a Fellow of the London College of Music in 1967, graduated in music from the University of Durham, and went on to study composition with Franco Donatoni and conducting with Franco Ferrara in Siena.

His catalogue reaches 155 numbered works plus around 150 minor ones, covering opera, chamber music, choral and sacred works, symphonies, concertos, hymns and band marches. He was musical director of the Astra Opera Theatre in Victoria, Gozo, from 1970 until his death, a run of 48 years. His editing and performing of early Maltese music earned him the description “father of the Maltese revival movement”.

3. Ira Losco

Ira Losco is a Maltese pop singer and the most commercially successful Maltese musician of her generation. Losco was born on 31 July 1981 in Sliema and started out in 1998 with a college band called Tiara. She broke through in 2002 at the Eurovision Song Contest in Tallinn, where “7th Wonder” finished second, Malta’s best result until Chiara equalled it in 2005.

She returned to Eurovision in 2016 with “Walk on Water” and placed twelfth in the Stockholm final. She has released 6 studio albums and won more than 20 music awards, received the Midalja għall-Qadi tar-Repubblika in 2008, and judged the first two seasons of X Factor Malta in 2018 and 2019. She married the chef Sean Gravina, who appears later in this list, on 1 December 2019, and they have two children.

4. Mike Spiteri

Mike Spiteri is a Maltese singer with a career of more than 50 years and a Eurovision top-ten finish. Spiteri was born on 27 November 1955 in Żabbar and sang in Maltese rock and metal bands through the 1970s and 1980s before turning to song festivals.

He represented Malta at the Eurovision Song Contest in 1995 in Dublin with the soul-influenced power ballad “Keep Me in Mind”, which took 76 points and finished joint tenth with the United Kingdom. He is better known at home for his Maltese-language songs, above all “Fejn Tħobb Il-Qalb” and “Fjura Fil-Kantina”, which have become standards of the Maltese repertoire.

5. Vince Briffa

Vince Briffa is a Maltese artist who works in video, sculpture, installation and writing, and who has represented Malta twice at the Venice Biennale. Briffa was born in Sliema in 1958. He took an MA in Fine Art with distinction at Leeds and a PhD in the UK, and has headed the Department of Digital Arts at the University of Malta since 2011.

His work sets pairs against each other, reality against fiction and physical against virtual, often using the screen as the seam between them. He represented Malta at the Venice Biennale in 1999 and again in 2019, in the Malta pavilion exhibition Maleth / Haven / Port alongside Klitsa Antoniou and Trevor Borg. At that Biennale he received the Omaggio all’Arte ed all’Innovazione a Venezia prize.

6. Nicky Saliba

Nicky Saliba is a former Maltese footballer who spent 16 seasons at Valletta FC and won 68 caps for Malta. Saliba was born on 26 August 1966 in Birkirkara and played as a midfielder. He started at Msida Saint-Joseph in 1986, made 41 appearances and scored 12 goals there, then moved to Valletta in 1987 and stayed until 2003.

For Valletta he made 287 league appearances and scored 21 goals, winning 6 league titles between 1989-90 and 2000-01. He was Maltese Player of the Year twice, in 1992 and 1999. Internationally he earned 68 caps and scored 4 goals between 1988 and 2003. He later worked as Valletta’s team manager and is in the club’s hall of fame.

7. Sean Gravina

Sean Gravina is a Maltese chef and former water polo player who reached the quarter-final of MasterChef on BBC2. Gravina was born on 21 October 1986 in St Julian’s and graduated from the Institute of Tourism Studies in Malta before cooking at the Hilton Malta and Chez Philippe.

He then took a Cuisine Diploma at Le Cordon Bleu in London, worked for Gordon Ramsay at Maze in Mayfair, and cooked at The Dorchester under Wolfgang Puck. His run to the quarter-final of series 7 of MasterChef in 2014 made him a household name in Malta. He left television in 2018 to open Crust, a bakery and bistro in St Julian’s where he is chef patron. He married the singer Ira Losco in 2019.

8. Joseph Calleja

Joseph Calleja is a Maltese operatic tenor and one of the most sought-after singers of his generation. Calleja was born on 22 January 1978 in Attard and found his voice at 16 after hearing a Mario Lanza recording. He studied with the Maltese tenor Paul Asciak and made his stage debut at 19 as Macduff in Verdi’s Macbeth at the Astra Theatre in Gozo.

He won the Caruso Competition in Milan in 1998 and took a prize at Plácido Domingo’s Operalia in 1999, and has since sung at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, the Royal Opera House in London and the Vienna State Opera. His 2011 La traviata DVD from the Royal Opera House was nominated for a Grammy, and the University of Malta gave him an honorary Doctor of Literature in 2012.

Calleja was appointed Malta’s first Cultural Ambassador in 2012. He set up the BOV Joseph Calleja Foundation in 2013 with Bank of Valletta, which supports Maltese children with artistic talent, and the Drake Calleja Trust in 2015, which funds scholarships for classical music students in the UK.

9. Andre Mangion

André Mangion is a Maltese actor, playwright and creative producer whose plays have been staged in Malta and New York. Mangion has performed in classical and contemporary theatre, physical and devised work, musicals, ballet and opera, and writes for the stage, television and short film.

His plays include Drago, Rinoċeronti and Raymond “Fight” Beck, which merges theatre and boxing and was nominated for Most Innovative Project of the 2017-18 Maltese theatre season. Arts Council Malta and New York’s Origin Theatre Company presented Raymond “Fight” Beck in New York. He worked on the Żigużajg festival and season programme in 2020 and 2021, joined Fondazzjoni Kreattività in 2022, and was appointed manager of the Spazju Kreattiv programme in 2023.

10. Davide Tucci

Davide Tucci is a Maltese actor and model who has worked in English, Maltese and Italian productions. Tucci was born on 14 September 1987 in Sora, Italy, to an Italian father and a Maltese mother, spent his first years in Isola del Liri and moved with his family to Malta as a child.

He began in musical theatre with Spring Awakening, then modelled, taking awards at the Malta Fashion Awards in 2010 and 2011. Maltese audiences know him from television roles in Katrina, Iċ-Ċaqqufa and Division 7. Internationally he has appeared in the Netflix series Barbarians, in Ridley Scott’s Napoleon and in Those About to Die, where he plays the Praetorian guard Manilius. He was cast as Frank Sinatra in the Italian series Miss Fallaci and took a lead in the Greek film Minore.

11. Emvin Cremona

Emvin Cremona was a Maltese painter and the designer of most Maltese postage stamps for a quarter of a century. Cremona was born in Valletta on 27 May 1919 and died there on 29 January 1987, aged 67. He trained at the School of Art in Malta, then at the Regia Accademia di Belle Arti in Rome, the Slade School of Fine Art in London and in Paris.

His paintings hang in parish churches across Malta and Gozo, including Msida and Ħamrun, in the Ta’ Pinu sanctuary, in the Malta International Airport chapel, and in the headquarters of the World Health Organization in Geneva and the United Nations in New York. He designed most Maltese stamps from 1957 into the 1980s, among them the issue marking Malta’s independence from Britain in 1964. He is regarded as one of Malta’s leading twentieth-century artists and a pioneer of modernism on the islands.

12. Steve Borg

Steve Borg is a Maltese footballer, a centre back with more than 80 caps for Malta. Borg was born on 15 May 1988 in Mosta and came through Mosta FC, where he played from 2005 to 2009 before joining Valletta.

In his first Valletta spell, from 2009 to 2015, he won 3 Maltese Premier League titles and 2 FA Cups. He spent a season in Cyprus with Aris Limassol, returned to Valletta and added 2 more league titles and another cup, then moved to Ħamrun Spartans in 2022, captained the club and won back-to-back titles in 2022-23 and 2023-24 plus the Super Cup, before returning to Valletta. He has 82 caps for Malta since 2011 and 3 international goals, against the Faroe Islands, Latvia and Liechtenstein, and was Maltese Player of the Year for 2019-20.

13. Glen Vella

Glen Vella is a Maltese singer, songwriter and vocal coach who represented Malta at Eurovision in 2011. Vella was born on 14 May 1983 in Fleur-de-Lys, part of Birkirkara, and studied voice and piano from a young age.

He entered the Maltese national selection repeatedly between 2005 and 2015, finishing runner-up in 2010, then won the right to go to Düsseldorf in 2011 with “One Life”, where he placed 11th in the first semi-final and missed the final. His biggest home success came in 2021, when he won the revived Mużika Mużika festival, which celebrates songs in Maltese, with the ballad “Ħarsa Biss”. He received a jury award at Romania’s Golden Stag festival in 2009 and the People’s Choice Award at the Pride Awards during EuroPride Valletta in 2023.

14. Esprit Barthet

Esprit Barthet was a Maltese painter best known for his abstract paintings of rooftops. Barthet was born in Valletta on 6 October 1919 and died on 4 July 1999. He began at the Government School of Arts in Valletta under Robert and Edward Caruana Dingli, then studied at the Regia Accademia di Belle Arti in Rome and at the Academy of Arts in Bath.

He painted portraits, still lifes, landscapes, seascapes, nudes and sacred subjects in oil, watercolour, pastel and charcoal, and from the early 1950s moved through cubism into abstraction. The rooftop paintings are the work he is remembered for, developed over decades from realism to pure abstraction. His paintings hang in Maltese public buildings and government departments and in private collections at home and abroad, and a street in Swieqi is named after him.

15. Clare Azzopardi

Clare Azzopardi is a Maltese author who writes for adults and children and has won 10 National Book Prizes. Azzopardi was born in St Julian’s on 5 July 1977, studied at the University of Malta and took a master’s in literacy at the University of Sheffield.

She writes mainly in Maltese, across short stories, poetry, plays and educational books, and much of her work has been translated. Her books include Others, Across (2005), Il-Linja l-Ħadra (2006) and the play L-Interdett Taħt is-Sodda. She won National Book Prizes across the years from 2006 to 2017, took the Terramaxka Prize in 2015, 2016 and 2021, and was nominated for the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award in both 2011 and 2012. She is an active member of Inizjamed, which promotes Maltese literature abroad.

16. Kevin Borg

Kevin Borg is a Maltese pop singer who won the Swedish television contest Idol. Borg was born on 9 June 1986 in Floriana and moved to Arvidsjaur in northern Sweden in December 2007.

He auditioned for the fifth season of Idol in 2008 and won it, becoming the first winner in the show’s history born outside Sweden. His debut album The Beginning followed in 2009, reached number 3 in the Swedish charts and was certified gold. He has entered Malta’s Eurovision national selection twice since, finishing second in 2013 with “Needing You” and third in 2017 with “Follow”, but he has never represented Malta at the contest itself.

17. Michael Diacono

Michael Diacono is a self-taught Maltese chef who has cooked at Giuseppi’s for close to four decades. Diacono never trained formally and learned in his mother’s kitchen. He and his brother Karl ran Giuseppi’s in Mellieħa for years before moving the restaurant to Salina in 2016, and he is still in its kitchen.

The cooking is Mediterranean, built on Maltese and Italian dishes and local produce, and Diacono has spent his career arguing that Maltese food is underrated at home. The brothers also took over Rubino in Valletta, a confectionery that first opened in 1906, which is now looked after by his nephew Edward.

18. Gianni Zammit

Gianni Zammit is a Maltese radio DJ, presenter and musician with a long career in Maltese broadcasting. Zammit started as a club DJ in Malta and became one of the island’s best-known radio voices, working at stations including Vibe FM, to the point that colleagues in the industry describe him as a fixture of the local broadcasting scene.

He competed in the Malta Song for Europe, the national Eurovision selection, and plays guitar, drums and keyboard. He is a director at JUGS Malta, a content and media agency. He is also known outside broadcasting for one of the largest private collections of KISS memorabilia anywhere, including stage-played guitars and one-off items.

19. Carmelo Mifsud Bonnici

Carmelo Mifsud Bonnici is a Maltese lawyer and Nationalist Party politician who served as Minister for Justice and Home Affairs. Mifsud Bonnici was born in Floriana on 17 February 1960 and graduated Doctor of Laws from the University of Malta in 1984. He is the son of Ugo Mifsud Bonnici, a former President of Malta, and a distant relative of Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici, a former Labour Prime Minister.

He was first elected to the House of Representatives in 1998, served as Parliamentary Secretary for Justice and Home Affairs from 2003 to 2008, and was Minister for Justice and Home Affairs from 2008 to 2012, with responsibility for the courts, the police, immigration and the prison. He resigned on 30 May 2012 after an opposition motion of no confidence in him passed. He lectures in Roman law at the University of Malta.

20. Ray “Zazu” Farrugia

Ray “Zazu” Farrugia is a former Maltese striker who went on to coach the Malta national team. Farrugia was born on 1 October 1955 in Floriana and played for his home-town club from 1974 to 1978.

He then moved to Sydney and spent 12 years with Melita Eagles, where he was given the first testimonial match ever awarded in Australian football, before returning to Malta in 1990 to play for Naxxar Lions until 1994. He won 4 caps for Malta as a player, against Tunisia, Spain and the Netherlands. As a coach he took charge of the senior national team from 2 May 2018 to 31 December 2019, a run of 18 matches with 1 win, 4 draws and 13 defeats, ending when Malta finished bottom of their Euro 2020 qualifying group. He received the Midalja għall-Qadi tar-Repubblika in 2020.

21. Renato Micallef

Renato Micallef is a Maltese singer who took Malta to Eurovision in 1975 with its first entry sung in English. Micallef, whose full name is Nazzareno Alessandro Micallef Garrett, was born on 19 November 1951 and has been performing since he was 12. His sister Helen sang Malta’s second Eurovision entry in 1972.

Performing simply as Renato, he sang “Singing This Song” in Stockholm in 1975 and finished 12th, Malta’s best placing to that point and a result that ended a run of last places. He won first prize at the Cavan International Song Festival in Ireland in 1990 with “Our Little World of Yesterday”. He has toured North America, Australia and the United Kingdom, hosted the radio show Separju on Super One, and still performs regularly in Malta.

22. Sir Anthony Mamo

Sir Anthony Mamo was the first President of Malta and the country’s most senior judge before that. Mamo was born in Birkirkara on 9 January 1909 and graduated in law from the University of Malta. He began as a private lawyer, joined the commission that revised Malta’s laws, and became Attorney General in 1955.

He was appointed Chief Justice in 1957 and held the office until 1971. He then became Malta’s first Maltese Governor-General, from 1971 to 1974, and when Malta became a republic in 1974 he was elected its first President, serving until 1976. He was made a Knight Bachelor and was an honorary professor of criminal law at the University of Malta. He died in Mosta on 1 May 2008, aged 99.

23. Joseph Calleia

Joseph Calleia was a Maltese-born Hollywood actor who specialised in villains from the 1930s to the 1950s. Calleia was born on 4 August 1897 in Notabile, now Mdina, and started out in music: at 12 he bought two dozen harmonicas and put together a local band. He performed in London music halls, served in the British Transport Service in the First World War, and emigrated to the United States in 1917.

On Broadway he appeared in Broadway (1926), The Front Page (1928), The Last Mile (1930) and Grand Hotel (1930), and became a star with Small Miracle in 1934. In Hollywood he played Algiers (1938), which won him a National Board of Review award, Golden Boy, The Glass Key, Gilda and Touch of Evil (1958), of which Orson Welles said Calleia was “one of the best actors I’ve ever known”. During the Second World War he led Malta War Relief in the United States and toured for the USO. He returned to Malta and died in Sliema on 31 October 1975.

24. Ġużè Bajada

Ġużè Bajada was one of the four Maltese civilians killed by British troops in the Sette Giugno riots of June 1919. Bajada, whose name also appears as Ġużeppi, was hit near Strada Teatro in Valletta on 7 June 1919 and fell on top of the Maltese flag he was carrying.

The crowd that day was protesting against the price of bread and against profiteering by flour importers after the First World War, and against the lack of self-government. Manwel Attard and Lorenzo Dyer were also shot on 7 June, and Carmelo Abela was bayoneted the following day and died on 16 June. The riots are treated as the first step towards self-government, which came with the 1921 constitution, and towards independence in 1964. On 21 March 1989 the Maltese Parliament made 7 June one of Malta’s five national days, and the four men are named on a monument in Valletta.

25. Giuseppe Calì

Giuseppe Calì was a Maltese painter of Italian descent and one of the most prolific artists Malta has produced. Calì was born in Valletta on 14 August 1846 to Raffaele Calì, a set designer and musician, and the mezzo-soprano Giovanna Padiglione, who had moved to Malta from Naples in 1840.

He studied at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Naples under the neoclassicist Giuseppe Mancinelli but took more from Domenico Morelli and the Verismo movement. His first major work, The Death of Dragut, was finished in 1867 and now hangs in the National Museum of Fine Arts in Valletta. He painted landscapes, portraits, altarpieces and church decoration on commission across the islands, running to several hundred compositions, and he taught, with his son Ramiro Raffaele Calì, Gianni Vella and Ignatio Cefai among his students. He died in Valletta on 1 March 1930. Malta issued a stamp series for him in 1996 and a coin in 2004, and a bust of him stands in the Upper Barrakka Gardens.

26. Marvin Gauci

Marvin Gauci is a Maltese chef and restaurateur who holds the title of Malta’s Ambassador of Gastronomy. Gauci learned to cook from his mother and grandfather and began his career in Ireland, at Buswells Hotel and Blackbush Golf Club.

He opened Tarragon in St Paul’s Bay in 2007 and Caviar & Bull in St Julian’s in 2014, and later took Caviar & Bull to Budapest. His restaurant group also runs Sole by Tarragon, Don Royale and Uncensored. Since 2016 he has been the chef behind Dinner in the Sky Malta, which hoists diners, table and waiting staff into the air over the island and which Forbes listed among the world’s ten most unusual restaurants. He was named Chef of the Year at the Definitive(ly) Good Guide to Restaurants awards in 2018.

27. Edward de Bono

Edward de Bono was a Maltese physician and author who coined the term “lateral thinking” and turned it into a career. De Bono was born in Malta on 19 May 1933 and died on 10 June 2021, aged 88. He took a medical degree at the University of Malta, went to Christ Church, Oxford, as a Rhodes Scholar for a master’s in psychology and physiology, and took a PhD in medicine at Cambridge.

He held appointments at Oxford, Cambridge, London and Harvard, and professorships at the University of Malta, Pretoria, Birmingham City University and Dublin City University. He wrote 85 books translated into 47 languages. The Use of Lateral Thinking (1967) was named by The Sunday Times as one of the 12 most influential books published since the Second World War, and Six Thinking Hats (1985) is the one most companies still run workshops on. He also proposed parallel thinking as an alternative to adversarial debate and invented the L game.

28. Sir Themistocles Zammit

Sir Themistocles Zammit was a Maltese doctor and archaeologist who found the cause of Malta fever and excavated the islands’ prehistoric temples. Zammit was born in Valletta on 30 September 1864 and died on 2 November 1935, aged 71. He worked as a physician, a professor of chemistry, a historian and a writer, often at the same time.

In 1905 he established that Brucella melitensis passes to humans through the milk of infected goats, which is what made it possible to get rid of undulant fever, or Malta fever, on the islands. He also excavated the Hypogeum of Ħal Saflieni, the Tarxien temples, Ħaġar Qim and Mnajdra, all of which are now UNESCO World Heritage Sites, and was the first director of the National Museum of Archaeology in Valletta. He was made a Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George, was knighted in 1930, and received an honorary doctorate from Oxford. Malta put him on coins in 1973 and 2006, and the main hall of the University of Malta carries his name.

Who are the most famous Maltese scientists and inventors?

The most famous Maltese scientists are Edward de Bono, Sir Themistocles Zammit and Joseph N. Grima. The 3 are listed below, most widely known first.

• Edward de Bono. Edward de Bono was a physician turned author who coined “lateral thinking”, wrote 85 books and taught at Oxford, Cambridge, London and Harvard.
• Sir Themistocles Zammit. Sir Themistocles Zammit was a doctor and archaeologist who showed in 1905 that goats’ milk carried Malta fever, and who excavated the Hypogeum and the Tarxien temples.
• Joseph N. Grima. Joseph N. Grima is a professor at the University of Malta who works on auxetic materials and mechanical metamaterials, has published more than 200 papers and appears regularly in Stanford and Elsevier’s list of the top 2% of cited scientists in applied physics.

Who are the most famous Maltese people who hold a special record?

The Maltese people who hold a genuine first or record are Sir Anthony Mamo, Kevin Borg, Ira Losco, Joseph Calleja and Renato Micallef. The 5 records are listed below.

• Sir Anthony Mamo. Sir Anthony Mamo was the first President of Malta, elected in 1974, and before that the first Maltese Governor-General.
• Kevin Borg. Kevin Borg was the first winner of Swedish Idol born outside Sweden, taking the fifth season in 2008.
• Ira Losco. Ira Losco holds Malta’s joint-best Eurovision result, second place in 2002, equalled by Chiara in 2005 and not beaten since.
• Joseph Calleja. Joseph Calleja was appointed Malta’s first Cultural Ambassador in 2012.
• Renato Micallef. Renato Micallef sang the first Maltese Eurovision entry performed in English, “Singing This Song”, in 1975.

Who are the most famous Maltese artists?

The most famous Maltese artists are Giuseppe Calì, Emvin Cremona, Esprit Barthet and Vince Briffa. The 4 are listed below, earliest first.

• Giuseppe Calì. Giuseppe Calì painted The Death of Dragut in 1867, now in the National Museum of Fine Arts in Valletta, and several hundred altarpieces, portraits and church decorations across Malta and Gozo.
• Emvin Cremona. Emvin Cremona painted church interiors across Malta and designed most Maltese postage stamps from 1957 into the 1980s, including the 1964 independence issue.
• Esprit Barthet. Esprit Barthet painted the abstract rooftop pictures he is remembered for, moving from realism to abstraction from the early 1950s onwards.
• Vince Briffa. Vince Briffa makes video, sculpture and installation work and represented Malta at the Venice Biennale in 1999 and 2019.

Who are the most famous Maltese singers and musicians?

The most famous Maltese singers and musicians are Joseph Calleja, Ira Losco, Joseph Vella, Mike Spiteri and Glen Vella. The 5 are listed below, by international reach.

• Joseph Calleja. Joseph Calleja is an operatic tenor who has sung at the Metropolitan Opera, the Royal Opera House and the Vienna State Opera, with a Grammy-nominated La traviata DVD.
• Ira Losco. Ira Losco is a pop singer with 6 studio albums, more than 20 music awards and two Eurovision appearances, in 2002 and 2016.
• Joseph Vella. Joseph Vella was a composer and conductor with 155 numbered works, and musical director of the Astra Opera Theatre in Gozo for 48 years.
• Mike Spiteri. Mike Spiteri is a singer who finished joint tenth at Eurovision in 1995 and whose Maltese-language songs “Fejn Tħobb Il-Qalb” and “Fjura Fil-Kantina” are local standards.
• Glen Vella. Glen Vella represented Malta at Eurovision in 2011 with “One Life” and won Mużika Mużika in 2021 with “Ħarsa Biss”.

Who are the most famous Maltese actors?

The most famous Maltese actors are Joseph Calleia, Davide Tucci and André Mangion. The 3 are listed below, most internationally known first.

• Joseph Calleia. Joseph Calleia was a Maltese-born Hollywood character actor who appeared in Algiers (1938), Gilda (1946) and Touch of Evil (1958).
• Davide Tucci. Davide Tucci is a screen actor who has appeared in the Netflix series Barbarians, Ridley Scott’s Napoleon and Those About to Die, and works in English, Maltese and Italian.
• André Mangion. André Mangion is a stage actor and playwright whose play Raymond “Fight” Beck was staged in Malta and New York.

Who are the most famous Maltese sportsmen?

The most famous Maltese sportsmen are Nicky Saliba, Steve Borg and Ray “Zazu” Farrugia, all footballers. The 3 are listed below, by caps won for Malta.

• Steve Borg. Steve Borg is a centre back with 82 caps for Malta since 2011, multiple league titles with Valletta and Ħamrun Spartans, and the Maltese Player of the Year award for 2019-20.
• Nicky Saliba. Nicky Saliba was a midfielder with 68 caps for Malta, 287 league appearances for Valletta and 6 Maltese league titles.
• Ray “Zazu” Farrugia. Ray “Zazu” Farrugia was a striker with 4 caps for Malta who spent 12 years in Australian football and later coached the national team.

Who are the most famous Maltese chefs?

The most famous Maltese chefs are Jonathan Brincat, Marvin Gauci, Sean Gravina and Michael Diacono. The 4 are listed below, most decorated first.

• Jonathan Brincat. Jonathan Brincat holds a Michelin star at Noni in Valletta, awarded in 2020 and still held in the 2026 guide.
• Marvin Gauci. Marvin Gauci runs Tarragon, Caviar & Bull in Malta and Budapest and Dinner in the Sky Malta, and is Malta’s Ambassador of Gastronomy.
• Sean Gravina. Sean Gravina reached the quarter-final of MasterChef on BBC2 in 2014 and is chef patron at Crust in St Julian’s.
• Michael Diacono. Michael Diacono has cooked at Giuseppi’s for close to four decades and runs Rubino in Valletta with his family.

What are the most fun facts about Malta?

The most repeated fun facts about Malta concern its temples, its silent city, its cross and a rock arch that no longer exists. The 5 are listed below.

• The megalithic temples predate the pyramids. Malta’s megalithic temples date from around 3600 BC and are among the oldest free-standing buildings anywhere, which is why they carry a UNESCO listing.
• Mdina is called the Silent City. Mdina keeps only a few hundred residents inside its walls and restricts vehicles, so the old capital really is quiet after the day trippers leave.
• The Hypogeum is an underground temple. The Ħal Saflieni Hypogeum is a subterranean complex cut into rock, dated to the Saflieni phase of Maltese prehistory, roughly 3300 to 3000 BC, and visitor numbers are strictly capped.
• The Azure Window has gone. The limestone arch on Gozo, which appeared in Game of Thrones, collapsed into the sea during a storm on 8 March 2017.
• The Maltese Cross has 8 points. The eight points stand for the eight obligations of the Knights of St John, and the shape originally referred to the Order’s eight langues, the national groupings its knights were organised into.

Is it expensive to visit Malta?

Malta is mid-priced by western European standards and is not the bargain it was a decade ago. The figures below come from Numbeo’s Malta data for early September 2026, and the wider picture is in our guide to the cost of living in Malta.

Accommodation is what moves your budget, not lunch. Rates in Sliema, St Julian’s and Valletta climb steeply into July and August, so the same room costs very different money in May and at the height of summer. Compare places to stay across Malta before you fix your dates rather than after.

What are the most popular holiday dates in Malta?

The most important holiday dates in Malta are the Feast of St Paul’s Shipwreck, Easter, Sette Giugno, the Feast of Santa Marija, Independence Day and Christmas. The 6 are listed below in calendar order.

1. Feast of St Paul’s Shipwreck, 10 February. The feast marks the apostle Paul’s shipwreck on Malta, and Valletta holds a procession with the statue of St Paul.
2. Easter. Easter is the biggest religious event of the Maltese year, with Good Friday processions in towns including Valletta, Żebbuġ and Qormi and a running of the Risen Christ statue on Easter Sunday.
3. Sette Giugno, 7 June. The date commemorates the four Maltese killed in the 1919 bread riots and has been one of Malta’s five national days since 1989.
4. Feast of Santa Marija, 15 August. The Assumption is celebrated across the islands, with the largest events in Mosta, Mqabba and Victoria in Gozo, and it is the peak of the village festa season.
5. Independence Day, 21 September. The day marks Malta’s independence from Britain in 1964 and is marked with parades and ceremonies.
6. Christmas. Christmas brings street lights, traditional cribs in churches and homes, and concerts and markets through December.

Village festas run from June to September and are the real Maltese summer calendar, each parish taking its own weekend with brass bands, street decoration and fireworks.

What are the top places to visit in Malta?

The top places to visit in Malta are Valletta, Mdina, Gozo, the Blue Grotto and Marsaxlokk. The 5 are listed below, most visited first.

1. Valletta. Valletta is the capital and a UNESCO World Heritage Site in its own right, with St John’s Co-Cathedral and its two Caravaggios, the Grandmaster’s Palace and the Upper Barrakka Gardens above the Grand Harbour.
2. Mdina. Mdina is the walled former capital, entered through a gate you will recognise from Game of Thrones, with St Paul’s Cathedral, narrow shaded lanes and a view over half the island from the bastions.
3. Gozo. Gozo is the greener, slower sister island, with the Ġgantija temples, Ramla Bay’s red sand and the Dwejra coast where the Azure Window used to stand.
4. Blue Grotto. The Blue Grotto is a set of sea caves on the south coast, reached by small boat from Wied iż-Żurrieq; go in the morning, when the light turns the water blue.
5. Marsaxlokk. Marsaxlokk is a working fishing village of painted luzzu boats, with a Sunday market and a line of fish restaurants along the quay.

Our guide to the best place to visit in Malta ranks these and the rest properly. Gozo is a 25-minute crossing from Ċirkewwa and the ferry takes cars, so check the Gozo ferry times and fares if you plan to stay a night rather than day-trip it.

PIN FOR LATER

WonderfulWanderings Pro Tips

The 4 tips below come from checking every name on this page against published records, and each one settles something the Malta round-ups get wrong.

1. Keep the two Josephs apart. Joseph Calleja is the living opera tenor, born in Attard in 1978. Joseph Calleia, spelled with an i, was the Hollywood character actor of Touch of Evil, who died in Sliema in 1975. One letter separates their search results, and most mix-ups start there.
2. Look for Malta’s biggest voices in Gozo, not in Valletta. The Astra Theatre in Victoria is where Joseph Calleja made his stage debut at 19, as Macduff in Verdi’s Macbeth, and where the composer Joseph Vella was musical director from 1970 until his death in 2018.
3. Do not credit the Triton Fountain to Emvin Cremona. The bronze tritons outside Valletta’s City Gate are the work of Vincent Apap. Cremona, whose name is attached to them in several round-ups, was a painter and a designer of stamps.
4. The Baptism of Christ group in St John’s Co-Cathedral is by Giuseppe Mazzuoli. Giuseppe Calì is credited with it often enough that it is worth saying plainly. The Calì to look for in Valletta is The Death of Dragut, in the National Museum of Fine Arts.

About the author. This guide is written and maintained by the Wonderful Wanderings editorial team. Wonderful Wanderings was founded in 2012 by Sofie Couwenbergh. Every person on this list was checked against published records for nationality, dates and what they are known for, and the entries that did not hold up were removed. The team covers Malta for independent travellers, including the hotels, the Gozo ferry and the tours worth booking around Valletta, Mdina and the temples, and updates this page when the facts change.