Malta

Malta is made of a rock called limestone.

Tall cliffs stand by the sea. Summers are hot and dry. Most rain falls in the cooler months. No rivers or lakes last all year.

Malta's islands are made of limestone, and much of the coast is steep cliffs cut by bays and coves. On the south and southwest coasts of Malta, the cliffs are up to about 250 meters high. The highest point on the islands is 253 meters above the sea.

The weather is Mediterranean: hot, dry summers and short, cool winters. Most of the year's rain, about 550 millimeters, falls between October and March. Malta has no rivers or lakes that last all year. Rainwater soaks into the rock and is stored underground, and about half of the water people use each day comes from desalination plants, which take the salt out of seawater.

The islands are dominated by limestone. A long escarpment along the Victoria Lines Fault crosses Malta, and the highest ground is a triangular coralline-limestone plateau in the southwest, rising to 253 m. Tectonic activity has tilted the island to the north, leaving cliffs of up to about 250 m on the south and southwest coasts and low, rocky shores in the north and east. On Gozo, round bays such as Xlendi and Dwejra began as underground caverns whose roofs collapsed.

The climate is Mediterranean, with an annual mean of about 19 °C and monthly averages of about 12 to 29 °C; more than three-quarters of the roughly 550 mm of yearly rain falls from October to March. Impermeable blue clay holds water in two aquifers between limestone layers, and the lower, sea-level one has been the main public supply for centuries, but with no permanent streams or lakes, about half of daily water needs are now met by reverse-osmosis desalination.

The blue rock thrush is Malta's national bird.

Malta has small lizards and geckos. The painted frog lives in Malta and Sicily. Many birds pass by on long trips.

Malta's national bird is the blue rock thrush, and its most common bird is the Spanish sparrow. Not many kinds of birds nest on the islands, but lots of birds pass through on their long migrations. Seabirds include Cory's shearwater.

The Maltese wall lizard lives here, and so do geckos and two kinds of snake. The painted frog is Malta's only amphibian; it is found only in Sicily and Malta. Low scrub called garigue covers much of the rocky plateau, and the Maltese rock-centaury is the national plant.

Britannica describes Malta's wildlife as typical of low-lying Mediterranean coasts. Native mammals include a subspecies of the Sicilian shrew and several bats; most other mammals, such as the Algerian hedgehog, rabbit and weasel, were introduced. Native reptiles include the Maltese wall lizard, the ocellated skink, Moorish and Turkish geckos, and the western whip snake and leopard snake. The painted frog, endemic to Sicily and Malta, is the only amphibian.

Few birds breed, but migrants are plentiful; seabirds include the storm petrel and Mediterranean and Cory's shearwaters. The blue rock thrush is the national bird. Cutting for timber and clearing land for building and farming destroyed much of the woodland, leaving a few stands of holm oak. Garigue, a low Mediterranean scrub, is the most common vegetation, and cliffs hold many native plants, including the Maltese rock-centaury (Palaeocyanus crassifolius), the national plant, and the sandarac gum tree, the national tree.

About 588,000 people live in Malta.

Many people speak Maltese and English. Bakers make a flat bread called ftira. People fill it with tomato, olive oil and tuna.

About 588,000 people lived in Malta at the end of 2025, and most live in towns; the central and harbor areas are the most crowded. Maltese and English are both official languages. Maltese grew out of a mix of North African Arabic and a Sicilian dialect of Italian, and it is written in the same Latin letters as English. English is also used for teaching in schools.

Most people in Malta are Roman Catholic, and there is full freedom of religion. One bread with a special place in Malta's heritage is ftira, a flat sourdough bread with big holes inside. It is cut in half and filled with things like olive oil, tomato, tuna, capers and olives.

At the end of 2025, 68.9 percent of Malta's residents were Maltese citizens and 31.1 percent were not, according to the National Statistics Office; 18.4 percent were 65 or older. Britannica traces the Maltese to ancient Carthaginians and Phoenicians as well as Italians and other Mediterranean peoples, with newer communities from North Africa and the Balkans since the 1990s and from sub-Saharan Africa since the early 2000s. About 150,000 people emigrated between 1945 and the mid-1970s, to English-speaking countries such as the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia.

Maltese, a fusion of North African Arabic and a Sicilian dialect of Italian, is the only Semitic language officially written in the Latin script; Italian was the language of church and government until 1934. Roman Catholicism is the official religion, with full freedom of belief. UNESCO added Il-Ftira, the craft and culture of Malta's flattened sourdough bread, to its intangible heritage list in 2020; its name comes from the Arabic fatir, and skilled bakers still shape it by hand.