I used to be having a nightcap on the palmy, Art Deco Phoenicia Hotel in Valletta, Malta, when a former British naval officer struck up a chat, rapidly confiding in me that he thought Prince Philip, Queen Elizabeth II’s husband, was the handsomest man he’d ever seen. The prince and the long run monarch spent the early years of their marriage in Malta, the previous base of the British Mediterranean fleet, the place Philip was posted to a ship.

Malta, the expat defined, had at all times been “very pleasant ” for homosexual males. “So many sailors and soldiers,” he stated, sipping his drink. “This lovely little island is even better today, though, because now everything’s all out in the open and not only does no one bat an eyelash, it’s just not an issue here anymore.”

Perhaps this angle explains why Valletta, the tiny capital of the smallest nation within the European Union — 5 islands within the Mediterranean between Sicily and Tunisia, with a inhabitants of about 538,000 — will probably be internet hosting EuroPride this September. This annual L.G.B.T.Q. occasion, which started in 1992, is awarded to a distinct European metropolis yearly. Valletta, with solely about 6,000 residents, would be the smallest host metropolis to this point.

“This celebration is an important opportunity for us to show off why Malta was rated No. 1 by the Rainbow Europe index,” stated Toni Attard, the artistic director for Valletta’s EuroPride program. The index is a rating by ILGA-Europe, a nonprofit group that screens the authorized and social local weather for L.G.B.T.Q. folks in 27 E.U. international locations.

A convention of tolerance

I had come to Malta from my dwelling in France for a protracted weekend to discover what precisely makes it so hospitable to guests — homosexual and straight alike.

“Our identity is an amalgam,” Liam Gauci, the curator of the Malta Maritime Museum and one of many island’s most respected historians, advised me. “We’re Roman Catholic, but the word for God in Maltese, a Semitic language, is Allah, a reflection of the two centuries the Arabs ruled Malta after invading in 870 A.D. These contradictions make us wryly tolerant of differences, including sexual ones,” he stated.

“The church may have frowned on it, but homosexuality was common among ship crews,” Mr. Gauci added. “The Grand Court of Malta even ruled in favor of Rosa Mifsud, a transgender Maltese, who filed a petition in 1744 to be officially recognized as a male.”

When I arrived in Valletta, the apricot-colored solar was nearly to sink into the Mediterranean. Inside the city’s stone ramparts, the steep streets had been lined with good-looking honey-colored stone homes whose balconies recalled the mashrabiya, or screened wood porches, within the previous quarters of Cairo and Tunis.

I finished on the Casa Rocca Piccola B & B — in a Baroque Sixteenth-century mansion that’s additionally open to guests — simply lengthy sufficient to go away my luggage. A dinner reservation awaited.

Just just a few blocks away, on the Michelin-starred restaurant Noni, Ritienne Brincat, who manages the eating room for her brother, the chef Jonathan Brincat, confirmed me to a desk in a vaulted stone cellar.

Knowing nothing about Maltese meals, I assumed it might be a variation on the fare of close by Sicily. Instead, such dishes as a ruddy fish bouillon seasoned with mandarin orange oil, risotto with native purple prawns, and purple porgy with stuffed zucchini flowers, sea urchin and a luscious fish-bone-and-citrus sauce revealed an intriguingly refined and umami-rich delicacies.

After dinner, Mr. Brincat supplied a primer in Maltese gastronomy. “Our food is a reflection of all of the peoples who ruled us,” he stated, explaining that Malta has one of many world’s most cosmopolitan cuisines. “We eat broad beans like the Egyptians and dolmas similar to what you find in Libya. We’ve been cooking with spices like nutmeg and cardamom for centuries, because we were a provisioning stop for ships transporting spices from India and further east to Northern Europe.”

British rule from 1814 to 1964 additionally left its mark, he stated, recalling a favourite childhood dish: a variation of a Bolognese sauce with tomatoes and chopped corned beef, a staple of the British Navy.

Baroque masterworks and neon-lit nightlife

Malta is just 122 sq. miles, so 72 hours had appeared like an sufficient period of time to discover. But I rapidly realized that I’d want at the least per week if I needed to take a ferry to expertise the turquoise waters and grilled rock lobster of Gozo, the wild northernmost island of the archipelago. That must wait till the following journey.

I made a decision to take a look at the principle island first, after which Valletta itself after that. The pleasant Anna Grech Sant, an area information, supplied an abbreviated however fascinating lesson in Maltese historical past, richly seasoned with memorable trivia.

One tidbit: “Spiteri” was the title given to the illegitimate kids of the Order of Knights of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem — extra generally often called the Knights of Malta — the Catholic army order that dominated Malta for hundreds of years after the Holy Roman emperor Charles V granted them the island in 1530. “Spiteri is also a common surname on Malta today,” Ms. Grech Sant advised me with a chuckle.

A 30-minute drive or bus journey from Valletta, Mdina, Malta’s previous capital, was constructed by the Arabs on the location of a former Roman metropolis. Behind its thick stone partitions, it’s a sublime Baroque city greatest visited at night time after the crowds of vacationers have left.

After crossing a bridge over the bastion of the previous fortress, now planted as gardens, we visited the cool, candle-wax-scented Seventeenth-century Cathedral of St. Paul, then stopped in on the Palazzo Falson, a townhouse that’s one of many oldest buildings in Malta. The palazzo — previously the house of a rich collector — shows a powerful array of work, furnishings, silver, armor, jewellery and cash.

Back in Valletta, the capital since 1571, the practically 450-year-old cathedral St. John’s “is worth a trip to Malta all on its own,” Ms. Grech Sant defined. From the polychrome marble tombs within the flooring of the cathedral’s predominant apse to squirming gilded cherubim and huge work of good-looking knights and muscular saints, St. John’s reveals the pulsing intersection between religion and sensuality that’s the triumph of Baroque artwork.

After a go to to the National Museum of Archaeology, which is housed in a powerful Sixteenth-century former lodge of the Knights of Malta, I cooled off subsequent to the fountain within the Upper Barakka Gardens, certainly one of densely populated Valletta’s favourite inexperienced areas, with sweeping views of the Grand Harbor.

After a packed day, I needed to avoid wasting sufficient vitality to pattern the nightlife, so I opted for an early dinner of squid ink lasagna with the gentle, spicy Calabrian sausage ’nduja, and native rabbit cooked in mustard and tarragon at Grain Street, the informal and extra reasonably priced sibling of the Michelin-starred Under Grain.

The pumping nightlife district of Paceville (pronounced Pah-chuh-ville) is in St. Julian’s, a 15-minute ferry journey and a brief cab journey away from Valletta. It might have been Hvar, Croatia, or Mykonos: Think crowded terraces with a world crowd of homosexual and straight revelers sipping large cocktails with Day-Glo straws, and this summer season’s earworm, Kylie Minogue’s “Padam Padam,” permeating the pavement. Paceville regarded like it might be a variety of enjoyable round 1 a.m., nevertheless it had already been a protracted day, and a severe cocktail appeared so as.

That was why I ended up on the Phoenicia Hotel’s Club Bar, the place my new pal, the previous British naval officer, ‌and I leaned into our dialog, and our drinks. “The Maltese are a worldly and open-minded people,” he stated, echoing my all-too-brief expertise on the island. ‌ “This is why I think the EuroPride in September’s going to be just wonderful, for everyone.”