Sliema, St Julian's and Valletta
Where the stone ends, the water is already deep
The Sliema front and its lidos, Balluta and Spinola bays, Paceville and St George's Bay, and the harbour sides of Valletta.
The shore from Sliema round to St Julian's is rock rather than beach, cut with steps and backed by a promenade. Stone holds its shape, so a spot on it can still be pointed at weeks afterwards. The sea off those ledges is deep, and we open by asking whether your loss stayed up on the stone or went over the edge, because that answer sends the enquiry down one road or the other.
Ring Seekers is a lost ring and jewellery recovery service that connects people who lost a ring, wedding band, watch, keys or phone in Sliema, St Julian's and Valletta with a metal detectorist who can search there.
Tell us what happened and where. We find a detectorist who can reach the front, brief them with your map and photos, and tell you honestly if the odds are poor.
A watch, a chain, a phone or a pair of glasses can all be written up here, and none needs a different opening line from a wedding band. Put the place ahead of the object: a rough description with a firm position gets further than the other way round.
An evening here moves about, so tell it in order
Begin with the water. Say whether you got in at all that day, and if you did, whether it was off steps, off a ladder, off a ledge or from a boat. Everything we ask afterwards hangs off that one answer.
Then the item itself, close up and in your own words. The hour is worth a guess if you cannot pin it down. So is whatever was in your hands: a bag, a towel, a jacket, and anything else that came off your wrist or finger in the same movement.
The front, the bays and the harbour sides
- Sliema
- The Sliema promenade
- Qui-si-Sana
- Għar id-Dud
- The Exiles
- Fond Għadir
- The Tigné area
- Tigné Point
- The Point shopping centre
- The Sliema ferry landing
- Gżira
- Manoel Island
- Ta' Xbiex
- Balluta Bay
- St Julian's
- Spinola Bay
- Paceville
- St George's Bay
- Portomaso
- Valletta
- Floriana
- The Valletta Waterfront
- The Upper Barrakka Gardens
- The Grand Harbour
- Marsamxett Harbour
- Vittoriosa
From the Sliema lidos round to the harbour walls
Pick out where your day actually happened before you write.
The Sliema front
The rocky coastline from Qui-si-Sana as far as St Julian's is thronged with sunbathers during the peak summer months. Steps and handrails are placed every so often to allow easy access to the water, and there are plenty of flat rocks to spread a towel on. The promenade above it carries walkers all year, with snack bars and restaurants on the coast road and kiosks near the shoreline.
Fond Għadir, the Exiles and the Tigné area
These are named among the favourite beach areas of the Tas-Sliema coastline, along with Qui-si-Sana and Għar id-Dud, and some are known lidos or beach clubs. Fond Għadir is dotted with shallow, flat receptacles dug out of the rock, once used for making sea salt and now used mostly for sunbathing. Behind that end of the front is Tigné Point, a pedestrianised development with The Point shopping centre on it.
Balluta Bay and Spinola Bay
St Julian's began as a small fishing port based on Spinola and Balluta bays, and the rocky shore runs from Qui-si-Sana all the way to Balluta. Spinola Bay is still used by fishermen, whose traditional boats are housed just below the restaurants, and the bay draws people at night and as a venue for open-air dining.
Paceville and St George's Bay
Paceville lies on the hill between Spinola Bay and St George's Bay, and it is where the clubs, casinos, restaurants, cafes and bars are gathered. The coastline of St Julian's and Paceville carries hotels and a marina complex, with Portomaso on that stretch. St George's Bay itself is sand rather than rock, a beach with facilities close to the restaurants, bars and shops of St Julian's.
Valletta above its harbours
Valletta stands on the Mount Sceberras peninsula, which rises steeply from Marsamxett Harbour on one side and the Grand Harbour on the other. Its side streets are full of tiny shops and cafés, while the main streets are lined with the larger shops for fashion, music and jewellery, with a historical site around most corners, from votive statues and niches to coats of arms on the parapets.
The Upper Barrakka Gardens and the Waterfront below
The Upper Barrakka Gardens stand near Castille Place, with views across the Grand Harbour, and their paths are lined with busts, statues and plaques. Below them the lifts link the harbour with the gardens and the city centre, which is how people come up from the Valletta Waterfront. Vittoriosa lies opposite, on a promontory jutting into the Grand Harbour.
What you can expect from us
The same person reads all of it
Whatever you send stays with the same person, so you are never handed on and never have to tell the story again to somebody new.
Matching the ground to the right detectorist
Rock ledges, quaysides and paving are not what every detectorist spends their weekends on. Sorting out who is at home on ground like that, before anybody sets off, is our end of the job.
Poor odds get said out loud
If what you describe is against you, that gets said in plain words at the start rather than afterwards, and you take it from there.
Half-remembered names are still useful
This front runs past a lot of lidos, bars and hotels and nobody keeps them all straight. A rough name, or what you could see across the water from where you sat, gets us to the same place.
How this coast behaves
Worth a line in your message wherever any of it applies to you.
The water off this shore
The sea along the Tas-Sliema and St Julian's shore is deep, though generally clean, clear and safe to swim, and it is excellent for snorkelling. So we ask how you got in rather than how far out you went.
Steps in, flat rock either side
Where you sat and where you entered the water are rarely the same piece of this shore: flat rock for the towel, then a set of steps and a handrail somewhere along from it. Write both up, and tell us what you crossed to get between them.
Paving, quays and bastion walls
In Valletta and around the marinas the surface is paving, steps and quayside rather than shore, and the city sits above the water on rock that rises steeply from the harbour on either side of it. Tell us where your route began and where it was heading.
Questions about Sliema, St Julian's and Valletta
A watch strap gave way at the Exiles and I cannot say where it landed.
Take the strap first. Say whether it fastened with a pin, a clasp or a buckle, and whether it had given you any trouble before that day. Then the place. The Exiles sits on the Tas-Sliema shore, which is rock you walk out over rather than sand, with the water deep off the edge of it. Say where you had settled and where you crossed afterwards.
Something went at Spinola Bay while we were having dinner.
Say which side of the bay your table was on, and whether you went down towards the water at all that evening. A bay that fills up for dining in the open after dark spreads people across a terrace, a railing and the working edge below, and those are separate pieces of ground. Tell us which of them your evening actually touched, and roughly when.
We were out in Paceville and nobody can say where it happened.
That is workable. Paceville sits up on the hill, with Spinola Bay below it one way and St George’s Bay the other, so a night out there leans towards one side or the other and that much usually comes back to people. Name the bars and clubs you remember, and say where you were standing when you realised.
Is St George's Bay any different from the rest of this coast?
Yes. St George’s Bay is sand, a managed beach in St Julian’s with facilities on it and the restaurants, bars and shops of the town close by, whereas the shore back towards Sliema is rock the whole way along. So say whether you were on the sand itself, on the stone at its edge, or in the water, and say it in the first line.
My phone went over the railing on the Sliema promenade.
A phone is worth sending in, and it gets handled no differently. The promenade runs from Gżira through Sliema and on towards St Julian’s, so pick out a fixed thing you were level with: a kiosk, a restaurant front, a set of steps. Then tell us whether it landed on the rock below the railing or carried past it into the water.
An earring is gone and we spent the whole afternoon in Valletta.
Valletta is kinder to this than open ground would be. It is a grid of narrow streets, so an afternoon there is a route rather than an area, and a route can be written down: the doorways you went into, the square you sat in, the street you came out by. On paper an afternoon like that tends to narrow to a lane or so.
It went in the Grand Harbour, somewhere around the ferry.
Be exact about the moment. A crossing has a gangway at either end and a deck in between, and they are nothing like the same ground, so say which. A passenger ferry runs between Valletta and Sliema and another goes across the Grand Harbour to Vittoriosa, so name yours, and say whether this happened at a landing or once you were under way. Out on the water, that is a long shot, and you would hear that from us first.
We were there last summer and never asked anyone about it.
Send it anyway. A gap of a season does not shut the door on anything, and the details we lean on hardest, which lido you were at and what you could see across from it, are the ones that stick.
Sliema, St Julian's and Valletta
The first message does not have to be tidy
It arrives on WhatsApp and it gets read there.
Name the item, then put us somewhere along this front, even loosely. What comes back is our reading of it, plus the handful of things we still need from you.