Malta Maritime Museum

Housed within the Old Naval bakery, the Malta Maritime Museum charts Malta’s maritime history and lore within a Mediterranean context. It also illustrates the global nature of seafaring and its impact on Malta’s society. The museum houses numerous artefacts highlighting the different epochs of Malta’s history that is inadvertently tied to the sea.

The Museum aims at illustrating Malta’s maritime history from prehistory to the present day and to illustrate the fascination of the sea within a Mediterranean context, without neglecting the overall global nature of seafaring. These aims are achieved by the constant search for, identification, and acquisition of artefacts related to the museum’s mission. This task has been aided by the constant donations over these past years by the Maltese general public, foreign individuals, companies, corporate bodies, foreign maritime and naval museums, foreign navies, and Maltese and foreign ambassadors and high commissioners. This is a large achievement when one considers that the museum didn’t even have one single artifact in 1988. Today the museum houses a unique collection of over 20,000 artefacts belonging to Malta’s Maritime past.

Nowadays the museum is proud to showcase some unique artefacts including the largest known roman anchor in the world, the earliest known ex:voto on the island, the largest ship model belonging to the Order of St John, the largest collection of cannons on the island, the Napoleonic figure head of the 110 gun ship HMS Hibernia, a 1950s working marine steam engine, and a collection of 60+ boats.

The Malta Maritime Museum at the Marina Grande helps visitors chart 7,000 years of history under one roof.