Mysterium Fidei

Carmelite monastery opened after 400 years, with tunnels and a secret garden

Mysterium Fidei is a museum and heritage experience within the Carmelite monastery on Old Mint Street, opened to the public for the first time in 2018 after four centuries of enclosure. The visit takes in the monastery's underground tunnels — cut from living rock and forming part of Valletta's original drainage and defensive infrastructure — and its secret garden, a walled courtyard that had been invisible to the outside world since the monastery's foundation.

The museum presents the religious, social, and historical life of the Carmelite order in Malta, with exhibitions on the monastery's role during the sieges of the Knights' period and the Second World War. The underground sections are particularly atmospheric. Tours are guided and run at set times; advance booking is strongly recommended as capacity is small and the experience has become popular since its opening.

things to do museum sight
A story
The Carmelite monastery on Old Mint Street kept its doors closed to the public for over four centuries. The underground tunnels beneath it — part of Valletta's original 16th-century infrastructure — were only opened for visitors as part of the 2018 Capital of Culture programme. The secret garden at the heart of the monastery complex, hidden behind high walls for four hundred years, was simultaneously revealed to Maltese and visitors who had passed the building thousands of times without suspecting it existed.