Calling All Hospitallers

"In Maltese, the word for `thank you’ comes from Italian, the word for `please’ comes from Arabic, and the word for `hello’ is `hello.’"

So says a resident of the tiny archipelago of Malta, south of Sicily.

Malta (this long and sumptuously illustrated travel piece reports) is positioning itself as a place where Europe, Arabia, and Africa meet. So they did meet for much of the last millennium, through crusades and holy wars and the adventures of the men made members of the Sovereign Hospitaller Order of the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem, a k a the Knights of Malta.

Now the place is peaceable, cappuccini are drawn there, and the Knights are devoted to charity and the service of the poor. But the sun still shines and the old buildings remain, better preserved and less crowded than their counterparts to the north — and many of them sport wooden balconies that give an idea of what the southern Italian immigrants who built San Francisco had in mind.

Take a look at the photographs: they’re enough to make you want to be a Knight of Malta.

• 10 December 2013