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MEETING MALTA
Despite 7,000 years of civilization, these islands remain the Mediterranean's best kept secret.

Text: DANIELLE ADAMS

A stooped peddler in a tattered cardigan walks up to a table of chattering men at the King George Bar in the central Maltese town of Rabat. The hawker glances around to make sure the police are nowhere in sight. He then pulls out a little bag hidden under his jacket and opens it up to show the men his prize. They lean in for a look. Each hands over a couple of Maltese lira and receives a numbered raffle ticket.

Once the tickets are sold, a peroxide-blonde woman by the peddler's side calls out a number. The winner gets the prize: a wire cage smaller than a Kleenex box containing a single quivering goldfinch. Then they all prepare for another round. "The Maltese people are crazy about birds," says one of the younger men, explaining a preoccupation that goes back further than anyone can remember. Everyone else at the King George minds his own business. Participating in lotteries like this one could get you in trouble, and the police station is just a few doors down.

Old customs die hard in Malta, and some local traditions date back further here than anywhere else on earth. Before humankind had invented the wheel or built Stonehenge, people were engineering megalithic temples in Malta to worship their fertility goddess. Since then, the country's spot on the map, at a narrow point in the Mediterranean between Europe and Africa, guaranteed that every seagoing civilization in the region would eventually land here and leave its mark. (Malta is an archipelago made of one large island - Malta - and four small ones, including Gozo and Comino.)

The countryside is so rich with relics that it becomes second nature to look twice at every scattered stone in case it might be an overlooked archaeological treasure. Few other countries seem to have more history per square kilometre. There are saggy-breasted goddesses at the temple sites, Roman catacombs, Arabic poetry etched in stone, spectacular baroque churches, relics from the British military and, of course, 25 kilometres of fortifications. All this, in an area smaller than Montreal island.

At the King George, amid the din of voices, some words sound almost recognizable. The Maltese language evolved from the Arabic spoken in eleventh-century Tunisia, and it remains the only Semitic language written in the Roman alphabet. But over the years the language has soaked up a jumble of new linguistic influences. "Good night" is bonswa, an expression that likely came from French knights. "Thank you" is grazzi, proof of nearby Italy's influence. "Hello" is the guttural, Arabic-sounding merhba. As the men at the bar shell out fistfuls of lira for illicit lottery tickets, churchgoers in the nearby town of Cospicua dress for the evening's celebration - the Immaculate Conception festa (feast day). Men in the countryside have been setting off firecrackers all day after decorating the church with panels of red damask and lowering the chandeliers. This festa is one of more than 100 still celebrated on Malta. It's a daylong affair starting with a special mass and ending with a ceremonial procession through the streets.

Church bells clang overhead. A young father in a Dolce & Gabbana shirt carrying his son on his shoulders shields a grandmother while the crowd crushes in around the church. A round of fireworks explodes and the church doors swing open. Out stream clergymen, choirboys and elders carrying tapestry banners and ornate candelabras. Finally, 12 sweaty, burly men appear, straining under the weight of a larger-than-life silver-plated Virgin Mary, which they will parade through the narrow, cobblestone streets.

Islanders say they have the apostle St. Paul to thank for traditions like this. The story goes that in the year ad 60, St. Paul was on his way to Rome to stand trial when his ship was wrecked at sea. He washed up on Malta and converted the people, establishing one of the world's first Christian communities.

It was for a more secular Madonna that the Maltese people were abuzz last fall with the arrival of the pop star on their shores. The superstar and her husband, director Guy Ritchie, came here to film their latest collaboration, Love, Sex, Drugs & Money. With all its historic architecture, Malta has become a popular shooting location for film studios. The faux-Colosseum where Russell Crowe fought in Gladiator was actually a set built in Malta.

Guy Ritchie has become so fascinated with Malta that he is planning to return to film an epic on the Siege of Malta. In the mid-sixteenth century, Malta became the seat of the Knights of St. John, a wealthy order established during the Crusades to minister to Christian pilgrims needing medical attention on the road to Jerusalem. In 1565, the knights fought off an invading Turkish army of more than 35,000 soldiers.

Today, if you ignore the electric streetlights and the cars, Malta probably looks much like it did when the Knights of St. John lived here. The capital city of Valletta was the first planned city in Europe. The knights built it in the 1560s with a regular grid of streets, a drainage system and five-metre-thick fortification walls - all of which still exist today. In the centre of the city, the knights built the St. John's Co-Cathedral, Malta's most opulent and impressive church. The floor is made of nearly 400 multicoloured marble tombstones, each wrought with inlaid emblems, skeletons and Latin inscriptions.

Back in Cospicua, as people scatter after the festa procession, Joe Schembri waits alone in the square below the church. The middle-aged factory supervisor has seen Malta change in the past few decades as thousands of his countrymen, including his own siblings, emigrated. Today, with about 400,000 Maltese living abroad, many in Mississauga, Ont., and Australia, the expatriate population now equals the number still living in Malta.

Schembri remembers when he was a young man and Cospicua's festa was among the biggest events of the year. "It used to be you would buy a whole new outfit for the day of the feast. It was the main entertainment back then," he says. "But times have changed a lot."

Nowhere is this more apparent than in the district of St. Julian's on Sunday afternoons. After mass, local teenagers - many not old enough to drive - strip down to the slinkiest tube tops and miniskirts to dance to Europop in the clubs of Paceville. A few blocks away, the neighbourhood is a mess of construction and cranes as builders rush to finish Portomaso, an expensive condo development adjoined to the polished marble Hilton hotel. Most of the units have already been purchased by wealthy German and British sun seekers.

Such changes aren't enough for some young people on the islands. "Malta is like Europe, but 20 years behind," says twentysomething Albert Buhagiar, lounging at Café Ole. He sports a carefully trimmed goatee and shaved head and cringes a little as Michael Jackson belts out "Billie Jean" from a nearby TV.

Buhagiar, who works for a German lighting manufacturer, believes the country's potential lies in strengthening ties with the rest of Europe, especially when it comes to tourism. "We have the oldest freestanding temples in the world," says Buhagiar. "It kills me how everyone always talks about Stonehenge. I think it's something we need to blow the trumpets about."

But in Malta, the proudest pieces of history don't always coexist peacefully with contemporary life. At Mnajdra, a most impressive of Malta's 23 prehistoric temples perches on a hill overlooking the Mediterranean. Last Easter, intruders knocked down several megaliths, cracking some stones. Thousands of Maltese marched in protest, blaming the government for failing to protect the site.

Any mention of the incident draws angry reactions. "It was a great shock to everyone," says Simone Mizzi who works with Din l-Art Helwa, a heritage group her father started 35 years ago. "The temples have stood for more than 5,000 years, so it never occurred to anyone that someone would go and topple them."

The elegant Mizzi speaks English with the island's Latin-inflected accent, holding her "L"s extra long. "One of my father's favourite sayings is that Malta is one historic site, not several."

One of Mizzi's most prized restoration projects is the Chapel of the Annunciation in the southern village of Hal Millieri, far away from where tourists visit. When Mizzi's heritage group discovered it, farmers had been using the building as a donkey barn. One by one, paintings of medieval saints started appearing as restorers chipped whitewash from the walls. The hidden Byzantine-style frescoes turned out to be some of the finest existing examples of early medieval church art. Remnants from an earlier chapel and an even earlier Roman villa also turned up on the same spot. The frescoes are so fragile the public can only see them three hours the first Sunday of each month.

The chapel site is a great metaphor for the island on which it sits. Chip the surface of modern-day Malta, and you will find the richly painted history of the nation's past layered just beneath.