The Palace Armoury occupies the southern wing of the Grand Masters' Palace on Republic Street and holds one of Europe's most significant collections of medieval and Renaissance arms and armour. The 5,000-piece collection includes complete suits of armour for individual Grand Masters, Ottoman weapons captured at the Great Siege of 1565, and a remarkable range of period firearms, pikes, and swords. The armour is displayed largely as it would have been in the original armoury — ranked in rows, as if a standing army had just removed their equipment.
Unlike the state rooms of the palace, the armoury was purpose-built for this function and the scale of the collection is impressive. The Knights required every knight to maintain a complete suit of armour throughout their life in Malta, and the resulting accumulation over two centuries of occupation produced one of the great arms collections in Europe. Tickets cover both the armoury and the state rooms.