Brown Girl in London

One view of Valletta taken from the Lower Baraca gardens. Do you see the stone structure right in the middle - with what looks like lots of windows/archways? That's the location of the Upper Baraca gardens which we walked over to next.

St. John's Co-Cathedral, build by the Knights of Malta over 400 years ago. Inside are the tombs of many knights and Grand Masters of the church. It is here that Caravaggio became a knight himself and painted the masterpiece "The Beheading of John the Baptist", which we got to see in all it's splendour but weren't allowed to take any pictures. Due to Caravaggio's somewhat turbulent nature shortly after he was knighted, he got into a fight with some other folks and was stripped of his titles. Then he took off back to Italy.

These are various pictures taken from inside the cathedral. That dark one is the floor. It's made up of tombstones of the many knights, so basically you're walking over the dead. The tombstones, like everything else in the cathedral, are elaborate and intricate. There's so much going on inside it was hard to focus sometimes.

The top left is a close-up of the ceiling. There isn't one piece of ceiling left uncovered and all paintings are like these ones depicting various scenes from the bible. Sometimes the scenes are from different times in a particular Grand Master's life, like a major battle or event.

Another view of Valletta.