Heritage Malta is organizing a Heritage Trail which will be focusing on the Great Siege of 1565. The Heritage Trail which will take place on Sunday September 7th, the eve of the Feast of Our Lady of Victories, will take participants to various sites associated with the Great Siege where experts on the various topics will be giving brief talks on the subject concerned.

Participants will meet at the Palace of the Grand Master at 0900 hrs where they will be visiting the State Rooms for a short lecture on d'Aleccio's fresco's depicting the Great Siege. These are a contemporary record of a maritime event of the greatest important to European history. The frescos started being painted eleven years after the siege and although Matteo Perez d'Aleccio himself was not a witness to the event he relied heavily on Francisco Balbi di Corregio's account of the Great Siege and on surviving Knights, including the Grand Master who surely furnished the artist with more information.

From the Palace the participants will be walking to the Police Academy Section of Fort St Elmo in Lower Valletta where they will get to know about the fierce fighting that took place on that site. The next stop will be at the Chapel of the Nativity in Fort St Angelo in Vittoriosa. From this high point one can get a bird's eye view of the Grand Harbour where most of the Great Siege conflicts took place. The final lag will take participants to the Inquisitor's Palace where a talk on The Great Siege in Cultural Memory will be delivered.

Tickets, costing ? 12 for the general public and ? 8 for Heritage Malta members, must be bought beforehand from the Heritage Malta Head Office in Merchants Street, Valletta. For booking and more information phone Heritage Malta on 2295 4312.