National Museum of Natural History

The National Museum of Natural History is situated within Palazzo Vilhena, a landmark structure in the silent city of Mdina.
Commissioned in 1724 by Grand Master Antonio Manoel de Vilhena, the palace was designed by the French architect Charles François de Mondion in the Parisian Baroque style.
Before its conversion into a museum, the building served several distinct roles: it functioned as a temporary hospital during the 1837 cholera outbreak, a sanatorium for British military personnel starting in 1860, and a dedicated tuberculosis clinic until its closure in January 1956.

The museum was officially inaugurated on 22 June 1973, marking a shift towards the systematic preservation of Malta’s biological and palaeontological heritage.
Its primary mandate involves the acquisition, curation, and conservation of specimens, with a specific focus on the endemic and indigenous flora and fauna of the Maltese archipelago.
The current repository houses more than 10,000 mineral and geological items, 12,000 specimens of birds and mammals, and collections of hundreds of thousands of molluscs, insects, and fossils.

Exhibition spaces are organised thematically, spanning topics from palaeontology to marine biology.
Each hall honours a specific local natural historian, acknowledging those who documented Malta’s ecosystems and the organisms thriving within them.
The Joe Sultana Hall examines the unique ecology of the satellite islets: Filfla, Fungus Rock, St Paul’s Islands, and Comino, while the ornithology hall, named after the first Maltese natural history curator Giuseppe Despott, presents a global perspective on avian diversity through systematic classification.
The Lewis Mizzi Hall provides further specialised insight, displaying a significant portion of Mizzi’s historic mineralogical collection.

Beyond its role as a repository, the institution serves as a centre for active research and community engagement.
The museum’s mission is sustained through fieldwork, public lectures, temporary exhibitions, and scientific outreach.
It also facilitates academic discourse through publications such as its peer-reviewed, open-access periodical, the Bulletin of the National Museum of Natural History, Malta, ensuring that local biological and palaeontological research remains accessible to the international scientific community.

FACILITIES AVAILABLE ON SITE

Lockers	Nappy Changing Facility