A local guide · Città Beland

Żejtun: A Local Guide to Malta’s Olive Town

A slow, opinionated guide to Żejtun — the small hill town in southern Malta whose name means “olives” and whose formal title, Città Beland, was bestowed by Grand Master Hompesch in 1797. The Roman villa, the baroque parish church, the festa, the food, the walks, the practical everyday side. Written by someone who lives here.

Żejtun is older than most of the towns visitors come to Malta to see, and quieter than all of them. Set on a low ridge looking down toward Marsaxlokk Bay, the town has been a working agricultural settlement since at least the Roman period, when its olive presses produced oil for the wider Mediterranean. The two thousand years that followed brought Arab settlement, the Knights of St John, an Ottoman raid during the Great Siege of 1565, and the slow consolidation of two adjoining villages — Bisqallin and Ħal Bisbut — into the single parish town we walk through today.

Most visitors to Malta never make it as far south as Żejtun. The ones who do tend to come for half an hour, take a photo of St Catherine’s parish church, and leave. This site is for the ones who want to stay longer — for the Roman villa, the family-run trattorias near the parish square, the coastal walks down to Marsascala and the cliffs beyond, and the working parish life that gives the town its quiet weight.