‍Settle into your accommodation, with time to unwind and acclimatise to the slower rhythm of island life before heading off the the olive groves.

Few ingredients tell the story of the Mediterranean as eloquently as the olive.

‍Today we spend time among the trees, discovering Malta's centuries-old relationship with olive cultivation and tasting locally produced extra virgin olive oils.

Learn how varieties, climate, harvesting and pressing influence flavour and quality, and discover the characteristics that distinguish a carefully produced extra virgin olive oil.

‍Then, surrounded by the grove, we'll gather for a special culinary experience.

‍Here food returns to its most elemental setting: the landscape from which it comes. Seasonal produce and traditional flavours come together in a relaxed celebration of the Maltese countryside and the people who continue to cultivate it.

‍The evening is left deliberately unhurried. Settle in, relax, use the fully equipped spa or take the opportunity to wander through Mdina as dusk falls.

When the daytime crowds disappear and lamps illuminate its narrow honey-coloured streets, Malta's ancient walled capital truly earns its name: the Silent City.

After breakfast, we travel into the countryside to discover another cornerstone of the Maltese table: cheese.

Working alongside an artisan producer, you'll learn how fresh local milk is transformed into cheese through techniques rooted in generations of rural knowledge.

This hands-on experience takes us beyond simply tasting the finished product. You'll discover the importance of the animals, the milk, fermentation, seasonality and the small decisions a cheesemaker makes at every stage of production.

Naturally, there will also be time to taste.

Later, the mood changes as we explore a very different side of Malta's past.

As darkness falls, we'll enter the winding lanes of medieval Birgu for a rather different encounter with Malta's past.

Led by Mario Cacciottolo, an award-winning guide and former BBC journalist, we'll leave the grand narratives of knights and sieges behind to uncover the wonderfully strange—and sometimes decidedly unsavoury—stories of the people who once inhabited these ancient streets.

Birgu was home to Malta's Inquisitor's Palace, where accusations of sorcery, superstition and witchcraft came before the tribunal. Drawing upon stories preserved in the historical record, we'll hear of curses, incantations and extraordinary love spells intended to secure an unwilling sweetheart or exact revenge upon an unfaithful lover, sometimes involving ingredients you certainly wouldn't expect to find in a recipe book.

As we weave through Birgu's atmospheric lanes, palazzos and fortifications, Mario will introduce us to tales of witchcraft and torture, ghosts and gruesome murders, including an executioner's house, a murderous priest and even a church said to have received a visit from the Devil himself.

It's history from the shadows: strange, entertaining and occasionally macabre, revealing the beliefs, fears, desires and superstitions of ordinary people whose stories rarely find their way into conventional histories of Malta.

‍This morning we head to Valletta, Malta's magnificent UNESCO World Heritage capital.

‍ Founded by the Knights of St John following the Great Siege of 1565, Valletta is a city built to impress. Behind its places and auberges and steeped streets, lie centuries of stories encompassing religion, warfare, trade, art and the cosmopolitan life of a Mediterranean port.

‍We'll explore the city before stepping inside St John's Co-Cathedral. Its austere limestone exterior gives little indication of the extraordinary Baroque interior within, where richly carved stone, gilding and intricate marble tombs surround one of Malta's greatest artistic treasures: Caravaggio's monumental Beheading of Saint John the Baptist.

‍ There will also be time to explore Valletta at your own pace, browse its independent shops or simply sit at a café and watch the city go by.

‍Later, we return to something much humbler, but no less important to Malta's story: bread.

‍With Professor Noel Buttigieg, Malta's leading food historian, we'll discover how bread was once quite literally a matter of survival. For centuries, Malta could not produce enough grain to feed its population, making the supply and price of wheat a constant concern for those who ruled the islands. Successive governments understood that keeping bread affordable was essential not only to preventing hunger, but also to maintaining social stability. Under British rule, attempts to liberalise the grain trade and reduce government intervention would expose just how politically charged the price of a loaf could be.

‍We'll explore Casal Qormi, today's Ħal Qormi, a town whose identity has been intertwined with bread for centuries. Renowned for its bakers and wood-fired ovens, Qormi supplied bread to nearby Valletta and developed a reputation that survives today, many Maltese will still tell you that the island's finest bread comes from Qormi.

‍But to understand Maltese bread, you need to see a bakery when it truly comes alive.

‍ After dark, we'll step behind the scenes of a traditional Qormi bakery as the night's work begins. While much of Malta sleeps, the bakers prepare their dough, tend the ovens and begin producing the crusty loaves that will appear on tables the following morning.

‍Amidst the heat, flour and aroma of freshly baked bread, Professor Buttigieg will unravel the story of one of Malta's simplest foods and reveal how the humble loaf connects agriculture, politics, hunger, community and centuries of Maltese history.

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It is a fitting contrast: from the grandeur of the Knights of St John to the everyday loaf that fed the people living beyond their palace walls.

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Our final full day begins by travelling deep into Malta's prehistoric past.

We'll descend into the Ħal Saflieni Hypogeum, an extraordinary subterranean complex carved into the living rock more than 5,000 years ago. One of Malta's most remarkable UNESCO World Heritage Sites, its chambers offer an intimate glimpse into the ritual world of the islands' prehistoric inhabitants.

From beneath the earth, we return to the landscape, and to one of the world’s oldest and most evocative natural sweetners: honey.

At the apiary of Professor David Mifsud, Head of the Department of Rural Sciences and Food Systems at the University of Malta, we'll discover the islands' long beekeeping tradition and the relationship between bees, native Mediterranean flora, agriculture and the distinctive character of Maltese honey.

Our final experience brings together many of the themes of the week at Ta' Betta Wine Estates.

Set among vineyards overlooking the Maltese countryside, the estate represents a contemporary expression of an ancient Mediterranean relationship between people, soil and vine.

During a guided tasting, we'll explore the estate's wines and discover how Malta's limestone geology, climate and winemaking traditions find expression in the glass.

As we raise a final glass together, we'll reflect on a week spent experiencing Malta and Gozo through their landscapes and flavours, and, above all, through the people who keep their traditions alive.

Enjoy one final breakfast before saying goodbye to Malta.