The National Library In Valletta, Just Around The Corner From Casa Ellul

Most of our guests come to escape the day to day chaos of their lives. They come to relax, to be pampered at our small luxury hotel, to sit in the hot tub on their terrace, to nestle in one of our sumptuous chairs to catch up on their reading.

Many an author has based themselves and indeed retired on our shores, such is the calm and tranquility. There is inspiration in many forms and the history of the islands conjures up story after story.

Where better to get a sense of a nation than in literature, at its national library?

Book shops are popular locally with local publishers being inundated with manuscripts in both Maltese and English. You’ll find guide books which focus on every possible past time and local novels and compendiums of ghost stories, military escapades and novels based on holiday romances and the quirks of Maltese life.

The National Library, just around the corner from Casa Ellul, houses 750,000 books which in most part, were left by the Knights of St John; bequeathed by the knights in their wills.

You will also find illuminated manuscripts, hand written letters from every king and queen to the Grandmaster of the time, tales from Byron, who came to Malta and a first edition of Nostradamus – if you ask nicely, they will actually let you see it.

Normally frequented by researchers, the National Library doesn’t allow you to remove books but they will make every effort to help you find what information you are looking for. Remember, what you find about history on line, was probably fed in part from here.

The first edition of the world’s first encyclopedia are here – and in its complete form, recently restored by local charity New Leaf with generous sponsorship by the IMC.

But even if you aren’t researching anything, have a look around and imagine your own story in your room of our family home, which we’ve tried to keep as original as possible.