St John's Co-Cathedral
Conventual church of the Knights of St John, with a painted vault by Mattia Preti and two Caravaggios.
St John's Co-Cathedral was built between 1572 and 1577 as the conventual church of the Order of St John, to designs by the Maltese military architect Girolamo Cassar. Its plain, fortress-like facade between two bell towers gives no sign of the interior, which was transformed in the 1660s when the Calabrian painter Mattia Preti covered the barrel vault with scenes from the life of John the Baptist and had the pilasters carved in high relief and gilded. The floor is paved with about 400 inlaid marble tomb slabs of knights of the Order.
Each of the eight langues, or national divisions, of the Order maintained its own chapel along the nave, decorated to its own taste. In the Oratory hangs Caravaggio's Beheading of Saint John the Baptist, painted in Malta in 1608 and the only canvas the artist signed, together with his Saint Jerome Writing. The church was raised to co-cathedral rank alongside the cathedral in Mdina in 1816 and is managed today by the St John's Co-Cathedral Foundation.
Highlights
- Vault painted by Mattia Preti in the 1660s
- Caravaggio's Beheading of Saint John the Baptist
- Around 400 inlaid marble tombstones of knights
- Eight chapels of the langues of the Order of St John
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