Mosta

You can see the dome from half of Malta, which is roughly the point. Beneath it, Mosta is a normal, busy town of some twenty-three and a half thousand people: traffic, good cheap bakeries, a ring road. The Rotunda sits on the square like a docked planet; inside, the blue, white and gold coffering climbs a dome wider than St Paul's in London, and the sacristy displays a replica of the bomb that fell through it in 1942 and declined to go off. Locals mention il-miraklu tal-bomba (the miracle of the bomb) with reverence or a shrug, depending on the local. Come for Santa Marija on 15 August, when the town turns itself inside out: band marches, confetti by the sackful, fireworks over the dome until well past midnight. Any other day, have a pastizz in the square, then walk down into Wied il-Għasel, the valley behind, then along to the Speranza chapel, perched above its own stretch of valley, marking the spot where a girl is said to have hidden from corsairs behind a freshly spun spider's web.