Gzira Histories: The Story of a Town Everyone Passes Through
Gzira is the town people pass through. Sliema has the shopping and the name recognition; Ta’ Xbiex has the colonial villas and the quiet; Valletta has everything else. Gzira sits in between with a seafront, a creek full of masts, and a reputation among visitors as the place the bus goes through on the way somewhere better.
We have worked here long enough to find that funny, and then to find it unfair — because the history of this town is considerably stranger and more consequential than its reputation suggests. This is the index to a series about it.
In short: Gzira takes its name from an island a few metres offshore that has been a plague quarantine station, a Knights’ fort, a Crimean War hospital and a Royal Navy submarine base. The town itself only became a parish in 1921, grew on the back of the British fleet, built a national stadium and a theatre where Tito Gobbi and Black Sabbath both performed, lost its entire economy on a single day in 1979, and was ignored for long enough afterwards that much of its old fabric is still standing.
Contents
Jump to: The series · Reference · Why we wrote it · FAQs · Sources
The series, in reading order:
The Island That Named the Town (publishing 21 October)
How Gzira Became a Town (publishing 25 October)
Two Wars, a Few Hundred Metres Offshore (publishing 1 November)
The Fleet Years (publishing 4 November)
What Gzira Built (publishing 8 November)
Faith and Feast in Gzira (publishing 28 October)
Reading the Streets of Gzira (publishing 15 November)
Things to See in Gzira: A Self-Guided History Walk (publishing 18 November)
Reference:
Gzira Timeline: 1592 to Today (publishing 22 November)
Who Was Who in Gzira (publishing 11 November)
Parts open as they are published; until then each shows the date it goes live.
The series
The Island That Named the Town (publishing 21 October) — Manoel Island from the plague of 1592 onward: the Bishop’s Islet, the Lazzaretto and the forty-day quarantine, Fort Manoel and the engineer who designed it, and the famous travellers who sat out their confinement a few hundred metres offshore.
How Gzira Became a Town (publishing 25 October) — the 1796 arch that made the road possible, the French-named street and the knight behind it, the thrown stone of 1902 that founded the parish, and the fifteen years in which a suburb acquired everything a town needs.
Two Wars, a Few Hundred Metres Offshore (publishing 1 November) — the submarine base on Manoel Island, what the bombing did to the streets around it, how Malta dug shelters by hand, and Dun Carlo Manché, the parish priest who went down the hole first.
The Fleet Years (publishing 4 November) — the bars, the economy that depended on sailors, how jazz arrived in Malta in kitbags decades before it reached mainland Europe, and the drummer who went from wartime Valletta to Abbey Road.
What Gzira Built (publishing 8 November) — a thirty-thousand-seat stadium with a sand pitch, a theatre that hosted opera and heavy metal, Malta’s first packaged ice cream, a school that brought its name from another town, and a chapel built without permission.
Faith and Feast in Gzira (publishing 28 October) — a saint teaching catechism above a bakery, a church door paid for by a sailors’ bar, bells from Loughborough and a clock from Holland, the band, the July festa, and a coat of arms delivered by a Scottish laird.
Reading the Streets of Gzira (publishing 15 November) — four British governors, a Carmelite saint, a knight’s summer residence, the man who built the stadium, and a street named simply after the Fleet. Plus the houses with names instead of numbers.
Things to See in Gzira: A Self-Guided History Walk (publishing 18 November) — everything in the series you can still go and stand in front of, in thirteen stops, from the bridge to Manoel Island to the 1796 arch beside a car showroom.
Reference
Gzira Timeline: 1592 to Today (publishing 22 November) — every dated event in the history of the town and the island, in order.
Who Was Who in Gzira (publishing 11 November) — every person in the series, from Grand Masters to the baker’s sons, with where to read about them.
Why we wrote it
Partly because we restored a building here and wanted to understand what we had walked into. Partly because a great deal of this is genuinely not written down anywhere in English, and some of it is barely written down at all — the town’s bar years are within living memory and almost entirely unrecorded.
Most of what follows comes from the Gzira parish’s own festa programmes, where Maltese local history tends to survive: not in archives, but in the booklet handed out at the village feast. Where we could not confirm something, we say so.
The series will grow. If you know something about this town that is not here — particularly if you remember the Strand before 1979 — we would like to hear from you.
Frequently asked questions
What is the history of Gzira?
Gzira is named after Manoel Island, which sits off its shore and which served as a plague quarantine station from 1592, a Knights' star fort from 1723, a Crimean War military hospital and a Royal Navy submarine base in the Second World War. The town itself grew in the nineteenth century, became a parish only in 1921, prospered on the British fleet, and lost that economy when the last forces left in 1979.
Why is Gzira called Gzira?
Gzira is the Maltese word for island. The town takes its name from Manoel Island, which lies directly off its shore in Marsamxett Harbour — so it is named after something that is not part of it.
Is Gzira worth visiting?
For the harbour views of Valletta, the walk across to Fort Manoel, a working Maltese town rather than a resort strip, and a surprising density of history within a few streets — yes. It has no sandy beach and makes no attempt at prettiness, which is why it has stayed more ordinary and more local than its neighbours.
Sources and further reading
The full bibliography for the series. Most items are articles from the annual festa programmes of the Gzira parish and the Mount Carmel band club, which preserve far more of the town’s history than any published book, and which are digitised and freely available in the University of Malta’s OAR@UM repository. Maltese titles are glossed in English. Where our sources disagree on a date or a name, we say so in the text.
L-istorja tal-Gżira [The history of Gzira] — Parish of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Gzira. 75th anniversary publication, 1996, pp. 10–13.
Storja tal-parroċċa tal-Gżira [History of the parish] — Parish of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Gzira, 1996.
L-istorja tal-Gżira — Joe Ian Attard. Festa programme, Għaqda Mużikali Mount Carmel, 2001.
L-istorja tal-parroċċa tal-Gżira — Joe Ian Attard. Festa programme, 2002.
Il-miraklu tal-ġebla [The miracle of the stone] — Parish of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Gzira, 2002.
L-Istemma oriġinali tal-Gżira [Gzira’s original coat of arms] — Joseph Ian Attard. Festa programme, 2007.
L-arloġġ tal-knisja jagħlaq 41 sena [The church clock turns 41] — Joe Ian Attard. Festa programme, 2007.
L-ismijiet tat-toroq tal-Gżira [The street names of Gzira] — Bernard Scicluna. Festa programme, 2008, p. 21ff.
Il-Gżira fl-imgħoddi [Gzira in the past] — Mario Fenech. Festa programme, 2009.
B’radd ta’ ħajr lejn il-fundaturi tal-kumitat [The feast committee, 1970–2010] — Malcolm Camilleri. Festa programme, 2010.
Ritratt storiku fis-sala ewlenija [A historic photograph of the first bandsmen] — Joseph Ian Attard. Festa programme, 2010.
San Ġorġ Preca u l-Gżira [St George Preca and Gzira] — John Formosa. Festa programme, 2011.
Il-M.U.S.E.U.M. tas-subien fil-Gżira [The boys’ MUSEUM centre] — Jason Pawney. Festa programme, 2012.
Tislima lill-baruni Kelinu Vella Haber [Tribute to Baron Kelinu Vella Haber] — Għaqda Mużikali Mount Carmel. Festa programme, 2014.
Il-Lazzarett fil-Gżira Manoel [The Lazzaretto on Manoel Island] — Joseph Sant. Festa programme, 2015, pp. 29–30, after Paul Cassar, A Medical History of Malta, pp. 299–303.
L-Orpheum u l-Gżira [The Orpheum and Gzira] — Tony Micallef. Festa programme, 2015.
Il-Gżira fl-imgħoddi [Gzira in the past] — Tony Micallef. Festa programme, 2016.
Rue D’Argens — Joseph C. Sant. Festa programme, 2016, pp. 39–40.
Taħlita ta’ memorji u xi tagħrif fuq l-Empire Stadium [Memories of the Empire Stadium] — Bernadine Scicluna. Festa programme, 2019.
Il-Knisja Parrokkjali ta’ Sant’Antnin fil-Forti Manoel [The parish church of St Anthony in Fort Manoel] — Ivan Said. Festa programme, 2026.
Kif il-belt tal-Gżira kisbet l-istemma ċivika tagħha [How Gzira obtained its coat of arms, with the 1970 contract] — Parish of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Gzira, 1971.
Manoel Vilhena — Arturo Bonnici. Leħen is-Sewwa, 26 August 1972.
Il-wegħda ta’ Carmelo Pace [Carmelo Pace’s vow] — Emmanuel Magro Conti. Festa programme, 2006.
The 88-year-old Gżira photography shop with secrets to tell — James Cummings. The Sunday Times of Malta, 23 July 2023.
10th Submarine Flotilla — Wikipedia.
Manoel Island — Wikipedia.
Gżira — Wikipedia, including the Snake Pit, Britannia and Granada bars and 2024 population figures.
Carlo Manché — Wikipedia, drawing on H. Frendo, Europe and Empire; J. Micallef, When Malta Stood Alone (1981), p. 85; and A. Bonnici, Il-Kappillan Karlu Manché (1975).
Tony Carr (drummer) — Wikipedia, with obituaries in the Times of Malta and Malta Independent, January 2026, and Ġużè Camilleri’s documentary Strait Street to Abbey Road (2024).
Empire Stadium (Gżira) — Wikipedia.
Morrison Court is five self-contained apartments in a reimagined 1920s townhouse in Gzira. morrisoncourt.com.