Marsaxlokk Harbour and Luzzu Boats

The natural bay at Marsaxlokk has been a working harbour since Phoenician times, and the luzzu — the small, wooden, brightly painted boats with high-pointed prows — are its living tradition. Eyes are painted on either side of the bow; hulls are striped in blue, yellow, red, and green, each crew with its own combinations. There are usually a hundred or more bobbing in the bay, more in winter when the open-water boats come in for shelter.

Walk the quay in the morning and you'll see crews mending nets, cleaning fish, and chatting in Maltese; in the afternoon the boats are quiet and the cafes take over. The harbour also has a darker page of history — in December 1989, George H.W. Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev held the Malta Summit on a Soviet warship anchored just offshore, the meeting widely credited with formally ending the Cold War.

things to do sight
A story
The painted eyes on the prow of a *luzzu* — the *Eye of Osiris*, or *Eye of Horus* — are a tradition that goes back to the Phoenicians, who founded the original harbour here around 800 BCE. The same motif is found on traditional fishing boats from Sicily to the Levant. Maltese fishermen will tell you it protects them at sea; the more romantic claim it lets the boat see its way home.