Pillar 01 · History & Heritage

Żejtun in the Great Siege of 1565: What Actually Happened

Most accounts of the 1565 Great Siege focus on Birgu, Senglea, and Fort St Elmo. Żejtun is a footnote in those accounts, but a footnote with marks on its walls. This is what is known, locally, about the siege at the southern edge of the campaign.

This article is a stub. The episode is well documented in the parish, less so in the standard histories, and we are working with local archivists to publish a fuller version with sources.

The southern raid

The Ottoman fleet arrived off Malta in May 1565 and the main body of the force concentrated around the harbour towns. But raiding parties moved inland through the south of the island throughout the siege, in part to forage and in part to pin down the Knights’ attention. Żejtun, as the largest village on the route between Marsaxlokk Bay and the inland casals, was directly in the path of one of these raids. Local accounts record skirmishes around the older parish church of St Gregory, and the village suffered both materially and in lives lost. The raid was eventually repulsed, and the Knights remembered the south’s role: when the new capital at Valletta rose in the years that followed, southern villages received continued protection and investment, some of it visible in Żejtun’s later baroque heritage.

[LOCAL FACT — Mattew to confirm which marks in the fabric of St Gregory’s are currently attributed to 1565 and whether any modern survey has tested the tradition.]

What the south remembers

Maltese national memory of the 1565 siege is concentrated almost entirely on Birgu and St Elmo, with smaller mentions for Senglea and Mdina. The southern villages have, in the standard accounts, a walk-on role at most. Locally, this is corrected by parish memory, by family stories handed down, and by occasional archaeological work along the south coast. None of it overturns the standard accounts; it simply fills in the missing chapters. Żejtun’s role was not decisive in any military sense, but the village was directly in the path of a real raid, suffered real losses, and the parish has remembered it for four and a half centuries — which is itself worth noting.

What this article will cover

  • The strategic situation in the south and why Marsaxlokk mattered to both sides
  • The skirmishes around St Gregory’s, with the local sources we have
  • Civilian casualties and how the parish remembers them
  • The fabric: what marks are still visible and how they’re interpreted
  • Long-term consequences for Żejtun, including the eventual grant of Città Beland

Read more on this pillar

Part of our History & Heritage pillar. Read with St Gregory’s church, why Żejtun is called Città Beland, and the wider history timeline.

Mattew Cassar

Resident · Writer

Mattew writes zejtun.com from a flat above his grandfather’s old workshop on Triq San Girgor. He has lived in Żejtun for twenty-three of his thirty-one years.