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€0.00/ Night
24/7 Support
Looking for help choosing or for a property we don't list? Message our Private Rates Concierge on WhatsApp for member rates and insider knowledge on the right stay
The only hotel within the walls of Mdina, Malta's Silent City — a restored 17th-century noble palazzo of seventeen rooms, with a starred restaurant set on the bastion walls.
Collections:
Need To Know
- Seventeen individually designed rooms and suites, from rooms to duplex, executive and presidential suites, the top ones with panoramic terraces and jacuzzis
- The de Mondion, a Michelin-starred restaurant on the bastions; the casual Trattoria AD 1530 in the courtyard; private dining
- Concierge, 24-hour reception, fitness room, porterage; family rooms on request
- seasonal outdoor pool (June to September) at the Xara Lodge five minutes away, with free transfers — there is no pool at the hotel itself
- A restored 17th-century palazzo, the only hotel within the walls of Mdina
- Within the Xara Collection; weddings and private events arranged
Check in - Check out
Check in from 14:00; check out before 12:00.
We Love
- The position — the only hotel inside the walls of Mdina, the Silent City, set on its centuries-old bastions with views across half the island to the sea, a car-free medieval town all around.
- The building — a 17th-century palazzo built for the noble Moscati Parisio family, restored to its former standing with antique furniture, paintings, Parisian fabrics and king-size beds.
- The de Mondion — a fine-dining restaurant on the upper floor and the bastion terrace under chef Kevin Bonello, holding a Michelin star, with modern Mediterranean cooking and the island laid out below.
- The rooms — seventeen, each individually designed, the best with panoramic terraces and jacuzzis looking out over the countryside; intimate and quiet, in keeping with the city's name.
- The wider table — the casual Trattoria AD 1530 in the palace courtyard for relaxed lunches, private dining in the suites, and wine tastings drawing producers from Italy, France and Malta.
Key Features
Book Your Stay at The Xara Palace Relais & Chateaux
€0.00 for 1 Night
Location
Address
Misrah Il-Kunsill Citta Nobile, Mdina, Island of Malta MDN 1050 Malta
Travel Info
The Xara Palace sits on Council Square within the walls of Mdina, Malta's old hilltop capital, about 20 minutes from the airport and 25 from Valletta. Mdina is car-free, so you arrive at the gate and walk in; Rabat is just outside the walls, and the rest of the island is an easy drive from the centre.
Last Updated: 2026-06-10
Expert Review
Origins
Mdina is the oldest of Malta's towns — a fortified hilltop city, the island's capital long before Valletta existed, and known to this day as the Silent City for the hush within its walls. When the Knights of St John arrived they were granted it as the Città Notabile, the Noble City, and over their long stay they fortified and embellished it into the jewel it remains: a near-untouched medieval and Baroque town, almost entirely car-free.
The Xara Palace was built here in the seventeenth century as the residence of the noble Moscati Parisio family, and it holds a distinction no other hotel on the island can claim — it is the only hotel within Mdina's walls. Restored to reflect its former standing, it keeps the feel of a private palazzo rather than a hotel: seventeen individually designed rooms and suites furnished with antiques, paintings and Parisian fabrics, set around the building's old bones, with the best of them opening to terraces over the ramparts.
What raises it beyond a beautiful address is the table. The de Mondion, the hotel's fine-dining restaurant, is built into the bastion walls on the upper floor, with a terrace looking out over more than half the island; under chef Kevin Bonello it holds a Michelin star, cooking modern Mediterranean food from Maltese produce. Below it, in the palace courtyard, the casual Trattoria AD 1530 handles long lunches. The result is a small, quiet, genuinely historic hotel in the most atmospheric corner of Malta — a noble house in a walled city, with one of the island's great restaurants on the roof.
Top Secret
Dinner at the de Mondion is the thing to book — a table on the bastion terrace at dusk, the lights of half of Malta coming on below, the starred kitchen behind you. Stay the night and you get the rarer prize: when the day-trippers leave and the gates empty, Mdina becomes genuinely silent, and as the only guests sleeping inside the walls you have the medieval streets, lit and deserted, more or less to yourselves.
The Review
The Xara Palace has an advantage no rival can copy: it is the only hotel inside the walls of Mdina, Malta's medieval hilltop capital, the Silent City. That alone would make it worth a night — but it happens also to be a genuinely fine small hotel. The building is a seventeenth-century palazzo, built for the noble Moscati Parisio family and restored to something close to its old standing, with seventeen individually designed rooms and suites furnished in antiques, paintings and Parisian fabrics, the better ones opening to terraces and jacuzzis above the ramparts.
The food is the headline. The de Mondion, set into the bastions on the top floor with a terrace over half the island, holds a Michelin star under chef Kevin Bonello — modern Mediterranean cooking that is comfortably among the best on Malta — while the courtyard Trattoria AD 1530 covers the casual end. Service throughout is the discreet, unhurried kind that suits the setting, and the staff arrange the island beyond: after-hours visits to St John's Co-Cathedral and its Caravaggio, private encounters with the Order of Malta, yacht charters, wine tastings.
One practical note in the interest of fairness: there is no pool at the hotel itself — the seasonal outdoor pool is at the Xara Lodge, five minutes away by free transfer, open summer only. But a pool is not really why you come. You come for the walled city, the bastion views, the table, and the singular experience of staying the night inside Mdina after the gates empty and the Silent City lives up to its name. It suits couples and travellers who want history, calm and a great restaurant over beach-resort facilities — the most atmospheric address on the island.
