Palazzo Vilhena was built between 1726 and 1728 by Grand Master António Manoel de Vilhena as a summer residence, and today houses Malta's National Museum of Natural History. The French Baroque palace was designed by Charles François de Mondion, the same architect responsible for Mdina Gate, and its courtyard — symmetrical, arcaded, built in warm Maltese limestone — is one of the most handsome open spaces on the island.
The Natural History Museum makes good use of the palace's rooms, covering Malta's geology, marine life, paleontology, and land fauna through fossils, minerals, and taxidermied specimens. The exhibits are somewhat old-fashioned in presentation, which some visitors find charming and others find dated. The collection of Maltese fossil cetaceans is genuinely rare.
The building's history adds an ironic footnote: before becoming a residence and then a museum, it served as a cholera hospital, a military sanatorium, and a tuberculosis ward. None of this is apparent today from its elegant facade.