Gozo: slower, greener, wilder.

Gozo is what happens when Malta gets a deep breath and a different geography. The island is 14 km long, 7 km wide and home to about 33,000 people, scattered across fourteen villages each pinned to its own enormous baroque parish church. The pace is slower; the soil is rust-red and properly farmed; the cliffs along the western coast are taller and lonelier than anything on Malta itself. UK visitors who manage a few nights here — rather than the standard day-trip rush — invariably come away saying that Gozo, not Malta, was the highlight of the holiday. We agree.

The Citadel & Victoria

Gozo’s capital is officially Victoria — renamed in 1887 in honour of the Queen’s Golden Jubilee — but every Gozitan still calls it Rabat. At its centre, on a limestone outcrop visible from almost every point on the island, sits the Cittadella: a fortified citadel that was the population’s refuge from corsair raids until the eighteenth century. Today it is a small, beautifully restored ensemble of cathedral, museums, prison cells and ramparts — all inside roughly twenty minutes’ walk. Climb up at sunset for a 360° view of every village in Gozo and the dome of every church.

The west coast: Dwejra and the salt pans

The Azure Window collapsed into the sea in March 2017, and a strange new geography has formed in its place — the Inland Sea, a circular pool of clear seawater connected to the Mediterranean by an 80-metre tunnel through the cliff, is still one of the most photographed places in the islands. From here it is a fifteen-minute drive north along the coast to the salt pans at Xwejni: 350 years’ worth of small chequerboard depressions cut into the limestone shore, still worked by the Cini family in summer. Buy a bag of sea salt at the kiosk; it is the best souvenir you will take home.

Ramla l-Ħamra & San Blas

Gozo’s great red beach. Ramla l-Ħamra (“the red sandy beach”) is half an hour by car from Victoria, set in a bowl of farmland and reachable only by a single descending road. The sand is genuinely red — iron oxide — and the swimming is among the best in Malta. Behind it, in the cliff above, is Calypso’s Cave, the spot where Homer’s Odysseus is said to have been detained for seven years by the nymph Calypso. The cave itself is closed for safety reasons but the viewpoint above gives the best panorama of the bay. For a smaller, harder-to-reach version of the same beach, walk twenty minutes east along the cliff path to San Blas.

The villages

Gozo’s personality is most concentrated in its villages, each one a small republic with its own dialect and an emphatically large parish church. Xagħra sits high on the central plateau, with the megalithic temples of Ġgantija on its outskirts — 5,600 years old, older than the pyramids, a UNESCO World Heritage site, and weirdly little visited. Xlendi is a fishing-village-turned-bay at the bottom of a narrow valley, with seafood restaurants on the waterfront. Marsalforn is the closest thing Gozo has to a resort, in the friendliest possible British sense — promenade, gelato, families. San Lawrenz, in the west, is the prettiest village square on the island. Spend a slow Saturday morning driving between them.

Comino and the Blue Lagoon

The third island in the Maltese archipelago is essentially uninhabited — 4 permanent residents, a hotel, a chapel and an awful lot of goats. It is reached on day-boats from Ċirkewwa or Mġarr; the destination is the Blue Lagoon, a shallow inlet between Comino and the islet of Cominotto where the water is improbably turquoise and improbably busy in July and August. Our advice: go on the first boat at 9am, leave by 11.30, and stop at Crystal Lagoon (a cliff-walled cove on the other side of the island) on the way back. Or come in May or October, when the lagoon is yours.

If you can only do one thing on Gozo, walk the cliff path from Sannat to Ta’ ĊenĊ at dusk. It is the loneliest, most beautiful place in the Maltese islands.

Diving Gozo

Gozo punches astonishingly above its weight as a dive destination. The Inland Sea tunnel at Dwejra, the Blue Hole and Coral Cave at the foot of the same cliff, the wreck of the P29 patrol boat off Ċirkewwa, and the dramatic drop-offs at Reqqa Point are all internationally celebrated. Visibility is 30 m on a typical summer’s day; water temperature 23–27°C from June to October. There are around twenty-five professional dive centres on the island, and most can fit guests in for a try-dive at 24 hours’ notice.

Eating on Gozo

Eat at Ta’ Frenc, the long-running fine-dining institution outside Marsalforn, for a four-course Maltese tasting menu that includes the rabbit ravioli locals tell tourists about. Eat at Maldonado Bistro in Victoria for refined modern Gozitan cooking under stone vaults. Eat at Tmun Mġarr on the harbour for fresh fish off the boats. Eat at any village bakery for a Gozitan ftira: €6, hot from the wood oven, with potato, anchovies and rosemary, and you will not need lunch.

Where to stay

The luxurious choice is KempĪnsʹki Hotel San Lawrenz, a five-star resort in the west of the island with thalassotherapy spa and quiet gardens. The boutique stand-out is The Duke Boutique Hotel in Victoria. For something more local, take a farmhouse for a week — traditional limestone houses with private pools, available across the island for between £650 and £1,400 a week, and a properly Gozitan way to stay.

Practical Gozo

• Ferry: Malta–Gozo every 45 minutes from Ċirkewwa; foot-passenger return €4.65, car return €15.70. The ticket office is at Mġarr (paid only on the return leg).
• Buses: Tallinja routes connect almost every village, but service can be sporadic on Sundays. A small island car or scooter rental is the easiest way to explore.
• Best time: May, June, late September and October are perfect. Winter is mild and dramatic if you don’t mind the closed kiosks.

Frequently asked questions