Sea Water Distilling Plant

The shoreline of Sliema, Malta is characterized by its modern multi-story apartment buildings and hotels with balconies offering views of either the Mediterranean Sea or the harbor between Sliema and historic Valletta.

Interspersed among the contemporary buildings are a few older buildings that predate Malta’s present-day tourism industry, and while Fort Tigné at the eastern tip of Sliema or Knisja Parrokkjali ta’ Ġesù Nazaret (the Church of Jesus of Nazareth) seem too large and too historically significant to demolish, the much smaller Sea Water Distilling Plant– once a source of fresh drinking water for the island – is a more unlikely survivor of urban redevelopment.

The old distilling plant is a humble Victorian-era single story limestone building that stands on the seafront road eastwards from the Sliema Ferry terminal on the side of the peninsula facing Valletta.  In the latter half of the nineteenth century, the British administration struggled to provide fresh water to Malta, which prompted the construction of new infrastructure throughout the islands. 

The Sea Water Distilling Plant was originally built in 1881 to supply water to Fort Tigné and the surrounding area, and while this boiling-type distillery was the first such building constructed in Malta, it was abandoned just a year later when newer and more efficient water facilities were implemented.

The building, however, has survived right up to the present.  Today, the architectural anomaly is cherished by local residents as providing a link to Sliema’s nineteenth century past, and it also occasionally attracts the attention of curious tourists who happen to pass by this part of Sliema's shoreline.