Casa Ellul

Casa Ellul

Old Theatre Street is one of those Valletta addresses that passes without announcement, a six-metre-wide cobblestone alley between the Carmelite church and the Manoel Theatre, and the entrance to Casa Ellul is a door in the façade that gives nothing away from the outside. The family has owned the building since 1837, when they were wine merchants in the city; the two brothers who converted it into a hotel in 2014 clearly understood that a Victorian palazzo in the heart of a Baroque capital does not need to be invented, only edited. Nine suites across eight floors, each genuinely distinct. The lower floors keep the original bones: original Maltese patterned floor tiles, timber-beam ceilings, galleriji, the traditional enclosed wooden balconies that are one of Valletta's most specific architectural features, and a central courtyard presided over by a statue of Hercules. The upper floors shift register entirely, industrial and contemporary, with rooftop terraces that open over Valletta's limestone skyline toward the dome of the Carmelite church and, on clear days, the harbour. Suites 6, 7, and 8 have private terraces and are the ones to request. Risette, the ground floor restaurant, serves breakfast and dinner in the courtyard, which at night becomes one of the more intimate dining rooms in the city. The personalized breakfast, ordered the evening before and served to your table, sets the tone for a hotel that operates with the attentiveness of a private house. This is a hotel for people who find Valletta the most compelling thing about Malta, which it often is, and want to be inside it rather than accommodated near it. St John's Co-Cathedral is three minutes on foot. The rest of the city unfolds from the door. The short version: Nine individually designed suites in a Victorian palazzo on Old Theatre Street, family-owned since 1837, with original Maltese tiles, galleriji, a courtyard restaurant, and rooftop terraces above Valletta's limestone skyline. The most personal address in the capital.