Din l-Art Ħelwa is organising a talking and walking tour around the Msida Bastion award-winning historic garden this morning at 10am.

DLĦ volunteer Paolo Ferrelli, the garden’s warden, will be telling visitors stories about the duels, suicides, acts of heroism and the garden’s important neo-classical monuments – their funeral and military architectural significance and their symbols of death.

A visual presentation of the funerary traditions of the Maltese islands since Neolithic times is on display at the visitor centre.

The Msida Bastion Historic Garden, which houses the first protestant burial ground in Malta, was voted one of the most beautiful cemeteries in Europe by National Geographic. Located in the heart of Floriana’s 17th-century bastions and offering spectacular views over Marsamxetto Bay, the garden and its monuments were restored by DLĦ volunteers. It is the final resting place of many heroes of the Crimea and early British personalities, including Charles Mc Corrie, one of the three recipients of the Victoria Cross and of Mikiel Anton Vassalli, known as the ‘father of the Maltese language’.

The garden had suffered years of neglect, was pillaged and shattered by a direct hit from a bomb during World War II and won DLĦ’s prestigious Silver Medal from Europa Nostra in 2001.

The garden, found 100 metres left of the Excelsior Hotel (take first turning left down Great Siege Road, Floriana, below the public library), is open on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays from 9.30am to noon and on the first Sunday of the month between 9.30am and noon. For information on monthly guided tours and reservations, e-mail the warden on wardengor@gmail.com. All funds raised are dedicated to the upkeep of the garden and its monuments.