Grandmaster's Palace

One ticket, two halves — and check it’s open first

The Grandmaster’s Palace reopened in 2024 after a restoration costing roughly €40 million, and the practical thing to know is that one combined Heritage Malta ticket (about €12, roughly £10.30 for an adult) covers both halves of the visit: the State Rooms upstairs and the Palace Armoury at ground level. You don’t buy them separately, and youths, over-60s and children pay less — €10, €10 and €8 respectively, with under-6s free.

The catch that trips people up isn’t the price, it’s the opening. The palace is still a working seat of state — it houses the Office of the President of Malta — so the State Rooms close at short notice for official functions, sometimes the same day, even though the published hours are daily 09:00–17:00 (last admission around 16:30). The Armoury usually stays open even when the State Rooms don’t. Check heritagemalta.mt the morning you go rather than walking over from Republic Street on spec.

What to find inside

Head for the Throne Room first — the old Supreme Council Hall, renamed the Hall of St Michael and St George under British rule. Look up: the twelve frescoes running along the coving are Matteo Perez d’Aleccio’s account of the 1565 Great Siege, painted by an artist who’d worked on the Sistine Chapel ceiling. Next door, the Tapestry Chamber (the former Council Chamber) holds a complete set of early-18th-century French Gobelins tapestries, ‘Les Tentures des Indes’, woven with elephants, parrots and other scenes the knights had never seen. Then the State Dining Room and the long armour-lined corridors lead you down to the Palace Armoury — one of the largest surviving single-collection displays of arms and armour anywhere, kept from the Knights of St John.

How long, and is it worth it?

Allow 1.5 to 2 hours — about an hour for the State Rooms and corridors, then 30 to 45 minutes for the Armoury, which is bigger and better than the quick-glance most people give it. It’s an 8–10 minute flat walk from the City Gate bus terminus, where every island bus and the X4 airport bus end up, so you arrive on foot.

It’s the one paid interior in Valletta worth pairing with St John’s Co-Cathedral two minutes away. The cathedral is the showstopper and the single unmissable thing in Malta; the palace is the quieter, more rewarding follow-up, especially since the restoration. Do both plus the Upper Barrakka Gardens view and you have a tidy central half-day — just confirm the State Rooms are open before you build the day around them.