Malta. A rocky, golden-hued island surrounded by the restless bite of a trapped Mediterranean, dotted with cacti, farmland, thickly bastioned citdels, churches of baroque ornamentation, and megalithic temples where the sinking sun cuts through stone to altars and pitted rock.

Strategic, fertile, broken, rebuilt, its location along East-West trade routes has seen it invaded and colonized by Phoenicians, the Empires of Rome and Byzantium, Moors, and Crusaders. It has been relentlessly fought over by most of the Mediterranean, from the power struggles of emergent Medieval and Renaissance Europe, to occupation by Napoleonic forces and the bombing campaigns of the Nazis and Mussolini. As such, the Maltese spirit can best be defined as resilient, deeply rooted in tradition, religion and a turbulent military past.