Last week, Global Traveler honored VisitMalta with the Outstanding Social Responsibility Award for its actions to create an inclusive environment for LGBTQ+ travelers. In celebration, Out is spotlighting past coverage of the queer-friendly island nation destination.
During Malta Pride in September 2024, I left the crowd with my new friend from Copenhagen to check out the only full-time gay bar in the country. Café Society is a chintzy dive covered in stickers and purple tinsel. The fact that it’s the only one is surprising — Malta is a gay destination.
A small island 60 miles off the coast of Sicily, it’s the smallest nation in the European Union but has one of its densest populations. Known for its history, bright blue water, and year-round sun, Malta has a booming tourism industry, with most visitors coming from the United Kingdom, the United States, and Germany.
Boats pass through the Blue Grotto, one of Malta’s most scenic coastal landmarks known for its dramatic cliffs and crystal-clear waterQ Travel Malta
But I wanted to see local Malta. Not the parade, but the place I’d go on weekends if I lived there. The bar is queer, not strictly gay — two culture groups that feel more separate in Europe than in the United States. It was tiny, too small to dance in, but the limestone steps outside served as a little amphitheater of queers talking and drinking beers under the streetlights.
I was invited to Malta Pride by Q Travel Malta (queertoursmalta.com), the country’s only queer travel agency, along with eight writers from across Europe. They flew me from Berlin and set me up in a hotel in the “Three Cities,” named after the fortified cities around which modern Malta grew. One predates the Middle Ages; the other two were built in the 16th and 17th centuries. It could be called the “old town,” but that feels inadequate. It’s all old.
The historic skyline of Valletta, Malta’s UNESCO-listed capital city, overlooks the Grand HarbourQ Travel Malta
I connected with the guy from Copenhagen on the first day. Our group went on a hike by the sea, and he and I wore the wrong shoes. I wore huge, ugly Balenciagas, and he had vintage Alexander McQueen boots. Mine fared OK, but his got covered in mud.
“Use a towel when we get back and scrub that off,” I said.
“Oh, not to worry,” he replied in a jolly, British-sounding accent (he was educated at Eton and Cambridge). As we talked, I learned he was active in queer charities across Europe, owned a gay bar in Copenhagen, and wrote “spicy” opinion pieces on LGBTQ+ news. We were a match made in heaven.
At Café Society, a straight guy threatened to fight us when we accidentally stepped in front of him for the toilet. He was a British tourist, and he and his kind were the only thing that made Malta unfriendly to queers. The locals, and local laws, have made Malta a queer haven in the Mediterranean.
Sunset over Balluta Bay in Malta, where historic architecture lines the waterfront along the Mediterranean SeaQ Travel Malta
More than anything, the place feels ancient. Despite its tourism, the country, with its limestone and churches, retains a small-town feel. It’s strange to be in a place with such an old history, connected to the greatest empires and oldest cultures on earth, that now caters to the whims of retirees and travel groups. But the local queer scene is fiery and hopeful. Everyone I talked to felt passionate about passing better legislation. They are activists, and they are winning.
Malta gained independence from British rule in the 1960s. Since then, it has outpaced much of Europe on LGBTQ+ rights. In 2015, the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, and Intersex Association of Europe ranked Malta first for queer rights — a ranking it has held since. In 2016, it became the first EU country to ban conversion therapy. Same-sex marriage became legal in 2017, and its 2015 “Gender Identity, Gender Expression, and Sex Characteristics Act” allows trans Maltese to change their legal gender without medical intervention.
A Pride celebrant waves a rainbow flag during festivities in MaltaQ Travel Malta
Pride was great — not the corporate spectacle of bigger cities. My friend called it “provincial” but admitted that word was wrong. I’d say “ramshackle” — thrown together in that scrappy, DIY spirit that the best queer parties have.
Q Travel Malta offers LGBTQ-focused tours in almost every language. You can tour where season one of Game of Thrones was filmed or do a tour called “Gays vs. the Inquisitor.” Our guide, Artur Lengyel, is the company’s founder, and he took us everywhere — to Gozo, the neighboring island, and Valletta, Malta’s famous walled-in city (the entire city is a UNESCO World Heritage site).
A ferry approaches Gozo, Malta’s neighboring island known for its coastal views, historic sites, and laid-back atmosphereQ Travel Malta
Originally from Hungary, Lengyel is a polyglot: he spoke to some of us in Italian, chatted with locals in Maltese, and talked to me and others in English and German. He is a queer history nerd who has focused his passion on his adopted home.
From him, we learned that Malta’s location made it a strategic prize for various empires: Phoenicians, Romans, Byzantines, Arabs, Sicilians, Spanish, and finally the British. Malta is “the gate to the Mediterranean,” as Lengyel put it. “Everyone has wanted it at some point.” Lengyel’s mission is less tourism and more uncovering a hidden past. His team dug through Malta’s history to reveal long-buried queer narratives. “Researching this history was hard because documentation was scarce,” he said. Lengyel interviewed community elders and found the only book on queer Maltese history.
Some of his tales come back to me: the Maltese drag performer Bobby the Pianist, who did a flawless Carmen Miranda act for rowdy sailors, and the knight Jean de Valette, hero of the Siege of 1565, whose gay lover rests beside him in the Crypt of the Grand Masters — tales of love and valor in a place where love and valor feel real.
On our last night, I sat with my friend by the water, watching the fishing boats in the harbor, a full moon overhead. He said he loved how dark the sky gets over the sea. “No light pollution,” he said. “When there are no clouds, the sky is positively black!”
Sunlight pours through the historic arches of Valletta, Malta’s fortified capital city overlooking the Mediterranean SeaQ Travel Malta
It was true: The sky was velvet black with clear stars. When it was time to say goodbye, we hugged.
On the flight home, I realized this was the best part of Malta — meeting others like me — and that, in the end, is the point of queer tourism. Like the prototypical gay bar, queer travel exists for these connections. Yes, there are spas and bars and sex, but the best thing you can find is a friend.
Is that too saccharine? Maybe, but it beats being alone in the world. Some queers will remember Malta and the silly gay man in Balenciaga shoes. I live in their memory with the statues of the Holy Virgin on every corner, the warm evenings, and the sound of old church bells just starting to ring.
Evening lights glow across Valletta, Malta’s historic capital city and UNESCO World Heritage siteQ Travel Malta
