We took a relatively quick detour to see Mdina Malta on the last day of our trip. We were already a bit exhausted and suffering a bit of tourist burn-out, but Brian and I definitely wanted to see a few Game of Thrones filming sites and Mdina is a really cool and unusual fortified city that you really shouldn’t miss seeing while in Malta.

We drove here after our Blue Grotto excursion which you can read about here. It took about 20 minutes to get there. Before we got to Mdina proper, we stopped in Rabat at the Church of St. Domenic and the Blessed Virgin and Priory to check out one of the most famous GoT filming spots, which is the courtyard area where Ned confronts Cersei. Apart from the beautiful courtyard, there’s also a pretty church as well as a small museum there with some old church artifacts that you can check out for about 10 minutes or so.

After this, we drove to Mdina proper, and parked in the free lot just outside the City Gate. It was already pretty packed full of people here, and there was, again, a dude with a fake badge asking to get paid, which is a scam. Do not pay this guy, it is truly a scam, it is free to park there.

Walking into Mdina is quite the experience. The whole city is walled off and imposing. The City Gate is also used as the King’s Landing City Gate in Season One of GoT. The city itself is super cool, and it is 100% pedestrian. There are small museums, cafes and tight little alleyways to get around all over the place. We checked out the Cathedral (the original Cathedral in Malta – as compared to St. John’s Co-Cathedral in Valletta, which you can read about here). It was not nearly as ornate as the Co-Cathedral in Valletta, though still nice to walk around. The altar was impressive, but everything else was relatively plain, especially in comparison to the Co-Cathedral. We then went to check out the Cathedral Museum, which was interesting due to all the old, weird, medieval paintings everywhere. They also had an Albrecht Durer exhibit, but it really was mainly just sketches and we were not super impressed. We did enjoy the cardboard cutouts and posed with Albrecht.

Afterwards we headed towards a prominent filming site in Mdina which included a large square where Ned Stark was attacked by the City Watch. Littlefinger’s brothel was also in this square, so that was super fun! We also ate lunch at a small cafe here, which was fine enough, though nothing spectacular.

On our way back out of the city, we stopped in the Mdina glass shop which is two floors of really cool blown glass items that you can buy. You can get anything from jewelry to massive glass sculptures of strange animals like an alligator with pointy shoes! There is a smaller outpost of the Mdina glass shop in Valletta, but this one is definitely the biggest of the two. The blown glass is also pretty reasonably priced, especially when comparing to other famous glass towns like Murano in Italy. I highly recommend checking out these shops!

Mdina is definitely worth an outing while visiting Malta, even if you are not into Game of Thrones. There are cool alleyways to walk through (check out my reel on Instagram!), museums such as the dungeons to check out, as well as bars, cafes and restaurants. I would recommend going more towards the beginning of your trip though, as there is a lot to do here, and you don’t want to go with tourist burn-out!