Heritage Malta will be extending the opening hours of the Inquisitor's Palace in Vittoriosa. It is also offering discounted admissions after 5 p.m. on the occasion of the feast of St Lawrence.

The Inquisitor's Palace will remain open till 10 p.m. between today and Wednesday.

After 5 p.m., Heritage Malta will be offering visitors a 50 per cent discount on the normal admission fees which will also include entrance to the Art of Pain Exhibition.

Adults entering the palace after 5 p.m. will pay Lm1.50 whereas students and senior citizens pay 75c and children enter free of charge.

Tomorrow and on Wednesday visitors touring the palace in the early evening will be able to join a guided tour which starts at 8 p.m.

The palace was erected in the 1530s as the civil law courts of the Order of St John soon after the Knights arrived in Malta and continued to serve as law courts until 1571, when the Order transferred its headquarters to Valletta after the siege of 1565. For some years the palace remained empty.

When Mgr Pietro Dusina arrived in Malta in 1574 as the first general inquisitor and apostolic delegate of the Maltese Islands, the Grand Master offered him the unused palace as an official residence. Almost all successive inquisitors sought to transform the palace into a decent mansion. They all shared the same cultural values of clerical baroque Roman society and by the mid-18th century they had managed successfully to transform the building into a typical Roman palace.

Presently, visitors to the Inquisitor's Palace have the opportunity to tour the Art of Pain Exhibition. Most of the torture instruments on exhibit at the Inquisitor's Palace were never used by the Inquisition in Malta. However, the exhibition portrays strange, disquieting and incredibly sophisticated equipment dating back to the Middle Ages up until the 19th century.