How many times have you walked past the Grandmasters’ Palace, in Valletta, stopped to admire its architectural nuances but failed to spot a 250-year-old detailed etching of a tartana ship?

And what about the Russian ship carved on one of the walls of the baroque cathedral dedicated to the Assumption of Our Lady at the Cittadella, in Gozo?

They are just two of the thousands of graffiti spread across the islands that tell part of the story of Malta which is not written in documents.

The chapel of the Immaculate Conception in Qala, which is covered with graffiti that have been studied by Frank Theuma.

Unfortunately, since the local globigerina limestone is soft, these graffiti are gradually deteriorating, which is why the Malta Maritime Museum and Heritage Malta are documenting them before they are lost forever.

Ġużeppi Muscat, the pioneer of the study of Maltese graffiti, had been working incessantly for decades to document, study and preserve these engravings, according to Heritage Malta curator Liam Gauci.

The historical importance of graffiti, which some consider as an act of vandalism, has only been recently acknowledged and remain a new facet of maritime research. The more historians looked into the subject, the more we would learn that this is a nationwide phenomenon that had been lost in time, Mr Gauci noted.

So the museum is picking on what Mr Muscat started. Others have taken up the baton to preserve graffiti, with, among others, Timothy Gambin writing and researching the subject and photographer Daniel Cilia documenting thousands and building a digital database. The museum is also collecting any slabs removed from buildings during restoration. The oldest graffiti in Malta date back to the Bronze Age and are etched on the Tarxien Temples. They are most probably the oldest we know about in the Mediterranean.

Our walls are talking to us

The graffiti vary in shape and size: from angels in votive etchings to hand imprints influenced by the Middle Eastern tradition. Such imprints, known as Ħamsa, consist of a palm-shaped amulet believed to provide defence against the evil eye.

However, the most common and the largest examples date from the early modern ages and the British-rule periods and are found on public buildings and churches. Many come in the form of a ship, most likely as an ex-voto by sailors returning home safely.

A street named after maritime graffiti due to the huge number of graffiti found on a farmhouse nearby.

Mr Gauci explained that although graffiti were usually considered as a decoration, passers-by could easily miss them from a few steps away. The number of graffiti on one church also reflected the magnitude of the devotion of particular chapels.

Graffiti also provide clues about where people used to meet because they left etchings behind them on public buildings. Unfortunately, the graffiti do not come with a disclaimer or any documented sources, so the motive behind them remains unverified.

“One of the saddest things for a researcher is that we will never know what the person who did not afford a paper or a painting wanted to say. The only thing they afforded was scratching on a wall.

“Our walls are talking to us and telling us what these sailors and their fellow Maltese wanted to say, so we cannot lose this source of information,” Mr Gauci said.