The island of Malta has the world’s oldest free-standing buildings, 6,000-year-old Stonehenge-like temples. Invaders from Romans to Normans fought over control of its strategic location in the narrow sea between Sicily and Tunisia. St. Paul was shipwrecked there on the way to his trial in Rome and converted the entire island to Christianity. The Knights of Malta, driven out of the Holy Land at the end of the crusades, inflicted a major defeat on the Ottoman Turks, inspiring Europe to resist. Napoleon occupied the island, his troops defeated three years later by the British, who used it as their regional naval headquarters. During World War II, the Maltese suffered through 154 days and nights of continuous bombing by the Nazis, three times as long as the London Blitz. Malta has been a Mediterranean Forrest Gump, finding itself always in the middle of important events.

With such an extraordinary history, how could it have just 1.5 million visitors a year? With a main island 15 miles long and 7 wide, it has more World Heritage sites per square mile than anywhere else and, after a recent visit, we’ve concluded that Malta is the biggest little country in the world.

We were recommended to Trudy Grech as a guide, since she’s an expert on history and culture and we had a lot to cover in a few days (plus, we’d heard she was an interesting conversationalist, important when you’re spending a lot of time together). A personal guide is the best way to have maximum flexibility for the schedule, adjusting on the fly as things turn out to be more or less interesting than expected. Here's what to see:

The Knights of St. John (as they were originally called) moved to Malta in 1530 after being driven from the island of Rhodes near Turkey (where they had relocated after the crusades) by Suleiman the Magnificent, the Ottoman sultan. They walled in the area by the harbor and then in May 1565, the still-reigning Suleiman began a siege with 40,000 troops against 700 of the Knights, 3,000 regular