Homes and Living Conditions in Hospitaller Rhodes and Malta

Hospitaller rule shaped different kinds of homes on Rhodes from 1310 to 1522 and on Malta from 1530 to 1798. Knights lived in the Order’s own quarters, while other residents inhabited urban streets and rural settlements. On Malta, houses ranged from modest tenements to large town residences; their plans, courtyards and water storage reveal practical choices within a dry island environment. A household’s means and position in town or countryside mattered more than any single Hospitaller building style.

Rhodes: a town of distinct communities

A description of Rhodes in 1345 shows a town divided between an inner precinct, the collachium, and the borgo, the settlement beyond its wall. The division reflected the Order’s institutional presence as well as the town’s wider population. The evidence describes some knights as living in private houses, while much of the population of the borgo consisted of people whose work served the town and its maritime activity.

The Latin Christian part of the borgo included clerks, scribes, clergy, doctors, soldiers, merchants and pilgrims. Greek Orthodox residents and Jews lived in other parts of the settlement. Religious communities and occupations shaped the residents’ places within urban society. The account describes the Greeks as having good relations with the knights, whom they regarded as protectors.

The town’s surrounding settlements also had to contend with military threats. In the early fifteenth century, Hospitaller fortification work at places including Lindos, Polakia and Cattavia provided local inhabitants with refuge during an attack. These defensive works shaped the security of rural communities, providing a protected place to gather when rural settlements were threatened.

Malta: towns, building and changing urban space

When the Order arrived in 1530 it made Birgu its base on the Grand Harbour. After the Ottoman attack of 1551 it strengthened the harbour defences, and Senglea grew around Fort Saint Michael. Following the Great Siege of 1565, the Order built Valletta on the Sciberras Peninsula and transferred its headquarters there in 1571. Francesco Laparelli designed a straight street grid, while the Ufficio delle Case regulated construction. Security, new building and access to work around the harbour all affected where families could live.

Research on seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Maltese houses uses notarial records, property surveys and surviving buildings to distinguish urban palazzi, smaller tenements and rural dwellings. A large residence could have several floors and formal reception rooms; a tenement gave its residents less space and a different relationship to the street. Courtyards, staircases, kitchens and storage were parts of domestic use rather than merely decorative architecture. Plans from Valletta record both a palazzo and a tenement, making the difference visible within the same capital.

The unfinished Manderaggio project shows the opposite side of planned urban growth. The Order intended to excavate a small harbour and reuse the material for Valletta’s buildings, but the harbour was never completed. Poor and homeless residents occupied the site, and it developed into an overcrowded district with bad sanitation. Crowded occupation turned the abandoned excavation into a residential district.

Water supply and everyday conditions

Fresh water was a daily concern on Malta. Houses could store rainwater in cisterns: a documented eighteenth-century dwelling within Gozo’s Castello had one in a courtyard corner, and a rural house at Binġemma had a cistern near its entrance. Placement affected the work of carrying, storing and using water within a home. A cistern stored water close to the rooms and work spaces where it was needed.

Valletta also depended on a larger supply system. Between 1610 and 1615 the Wignacourt Aqueduct brought water from the Rabat and Dingli area towards the capital. The aqueduct addressed a citywide problem, while household cisterns continued to answer needs at the scale of individual buildings. Together with the contrast between a palazzo, a tenement and the Manderaggio, these examples show that living conditions depended on resources, location and public works as well as on the Order’s rule.