Mosta Dome Tours

Malta is famous for the lavish scale of its many scores of churches (there are 25 in Valletta alone) but Mosta’s Neo-classical parish church of St Mary stands out even among all this grandeur. Its eponymous, self-supporting dome measures 121 ft (37 m) in diameter and is 220 ft (67 m) high – bigger than St Paul’s in London – with every inch of the interior covered in gilt, frescoes and marble flooring. The church was designed by Maltese architect Giorgio Grognet de Vassé in the style of the Pantheon in Rome but built by solely by local parishioners and volunteers between 1833 and 1860.

The interior houses Malta’s biggest, most flamboyant organ, with 2,000 pipes, but the church is better known for a miraculous escape the congregation had in 1942 during WW2. On Sunday, April 9 the church was packed with 300 worshippers when three Luftwaffe bombs hit the dome. Two bounced off but one crashed through into the nave; amazingly it failed to explode, saving scores of lives. The legend of the miracle of Mosta Dome was thus born and a replica of the unexploded bomb can be found in the sacristy.