Named after the Arabic medina, Mdina has been known as the Silent City since most of its inhabitants eloped to harbourside Valletta in the 16th century, but the village of Attard, just 10 minutes away – longer for peripatetic saints – is a lot more silent. It’s here that, without much hullabaloo, Suzanne Sharp has quietly been transforming her 18th-century palazzo into a 17-bedroom hotel. “It’s not a hotelly hotel: we want people to feel like they’re staying in guest rooms in a historical Maltese house,” says Suzanne. A former kitchen is now the bar, designed with de Gournay: a wraparound mural depicts the Valletta harbour sometime in the 18th century, black-winged stilts stalking the foreshore, buxom galleons on the water. Elsewhere, the garden has inspired whimsical horticultural illustrations that unfurl over walls and across alcoves.
The villa next door came up for sale, and the Sharps added it into the fold – its garden is now home to the swimming pool and, down some steps, a spa glazed with Moroccan tiles in bold dragon’s-blood red and black. The five bedrooms there can be taken as a whole, as can – a surprise – a folly rotunda just across the road. Rooms are furnished with latticework of geometric tiles, tasselled linen blinds, ceiling fans and baths set in dove-grey marble. In some bedrooms, steps lead up onto balustraded terraces and balconies, to be set with wicker furniture. Looking down from a terrace, the garden is dense with the feathered heads of palm trees, every bit as sensuous as a painting by Rousseau, as if a tiger might be spotted prowling amid the green. Rick Jordan
Address: 147 Triq San Anton, Attard, ATD, 1285, Malta
Price: Rooms from around £550 per night.
