St. Paul’s Island

In the year 60, St. Paul was sailing across the Mediterranean Sea as a Roman prisoner when the ship carrying him was caught in a severe storm. After the storm passed, the sailors spotted the island of Malta and tried to land there but got stuck on a sandbar. With heavy surf pounding the vessel, everyone decided to abandon ship. Paul and the other people onboard swam to land, and nobody is said to have died during the calamity.

The place where St. Paul landed is now recognized as St. Paul’s Island, which lies at the mouth of St. Paul’s Bay on the northeast coast of Malta. This island consists of two sections connected by a rocky isthmus. The entire island measures just 0.038 square miles (0.101 square kilometers).

A statue of St. Paul stands at the island’s high point of 21 meters. The statue was erected in 1844 and inaugurated and blessed in 1845. An organization named Din l-Art Helwa has periodically performed maintenance on the statue since it was built.

The history of the island extends beyond St. Paul’s landing. The island was private property for an extended period, but the Knights of St. John (who ruled the islands of the Maltese archipelago from 1530 to 1798) formally took ownership of the island at some point and built a watchtower on the island in the 1600s. In the 20th century, a farmer named Vincenzo Borg lived in the old watchtower on the island but left during World War II. The ruins of that watchtower are still visible on the island.

The island today is still strongly associated with St. Paul. The landing of the apostle in the Maltese Islands and his conversion of the local populace to Christianity are still events celebrated and memorialized across the archipelago, and several churches across the islands, including in Valletta and the town of St. Paul’s Bay, commemorate the shipwreck that took place off of the small island now named after the saint himself.