Alexander|Upper Barrakka Gardens, Valletta — the terrace above an invented harbour

The best free view in Malta is a garden built for knights who wanted somewhere to sit. The Upper Barrakka is a walled terrace on the St Peter and Paul Bastion, arcaded in 1661 for the Italian langue of the Order, and it looks straight down the throat of the Grand Harbour. Stone's second unit worked these harbour views into the Alexandria of the film — the wide establishing shots where a Mediterranean port has to feel both ancient and enormous.

Nothing about the garden itself pretends to be Egyptian. It is stone arches, a row of busts, jacaranda and oleander in beds, and pigeons that have long since stopped moving for anyone. What it gives a camera is the drop: nearly forty metres down to the water, with the Three Cities laid out opposite in a continuous line of fortification and church dome, and ships working the harbour below in real time. Frame it, remove the modern cranes in post, and you have a port that could plausibly be two thousand years old.

Come at noon and you get the Saluting Battery firing from the terrace directly beneath you — eight cannon on the ledge, still fired daily, loud enough to make first-timers jump. The Barrakka Lift runs up from the Valletta Waterfront if you would rather not climb from the harbour, and the garden itself costs nothing to enter.

Lean on the parapet at the eastern corner. The view you are looking at is doing the same job for you that it did for the film: making a small island feel like the centre of a world.

Photo: Wikimedia Commons.