Marsalforn
Portuguese / French / Spanish / German / Italian
A
popular holiday resort with swimming facilities.
The picturewque bay of Marsalforn is
only half-an-hour walk from Victoria or six minutes by bus.
On the way to Marsalforn we have the
church and friary of the Capuchin Fathers. This church,
dedicated to Our Lady of Graces, stands on the site formerly
occupied by another dedicated to St Julian, then to St. Agatha
and later to the Nativity of Our Lady.
Marsalforn is one of the loveliest
and most popular seaside resorts in the Maltese islands. In
summer it throbs with life, as, besides the hundreds of Gozitan
families who have a summer house in this bay, many 
Maltese
come to spend the whole summer here. In winter it is
majestically quiet, with only a handful of fishermen and families
who live there are about.
Some historians say that, during his stay of three months in Malta, St. Paul came to Gozo and landed at this port (Marsalforn), others hold that the Apostle touched at Marsalforn after leaving Malta, as he was on his way to Sicily. Tradition says that he preached in a small pagan temple which was then converted into a christian church: this was in the locality where we now have the Marsalforn Hotel .
In ancient times, the sea
at Marsalforn occupied a good part of today's Marsalforn Valley:
it reached as far as the first archway we meet on the way
to 
Victoria,
where there were moorings for securing boats to the land.
Today boats are kept in a lovely little artificial port known as
Il-Menqa, on the right-hand side of the bay.
Marsalforn is an ideal bay for boating: boats with oars, motors and sails give this place a very lively look in Summer. It has no less than four hotels, all so different in their setting and atmosphere.
Near Ghar Qawqla, the arthest tip of the land behing the church, there were the salt-pans: quadrangular depressions made in the rock in 1704 for obtaining salt by evaporation the the sea-water with which they were filled.
Out
at sea to the north of Ghar Qawqla, at about sixty yards from the
coast, there was a whirlpool, which in 1801 became the grave of
three very pretty orphan girls. These together with their
other four sisters, were being brought up by a priest living at
Sabina Square, Victoria. In 1798, the French, who had
occupied Gozo, heard of these girls and wanted to 
have them. The priest, who had
been told that the French were about to call at his house to take
away the girls, made them look as ugly as possible and concealed
them in his cellar. he awaited the arrival of the French at
the entrance of his house, where he had a beauriful canary in a
very artistic cage. When the soldiers came, the cage
attracted their attention. The priest kept the conversation
on it and asked them to take it away with them - as a consequence
of which the Fench were prudent enough to forget all about the
girls.
Marsalforn has its own legends:
Some Turks once entered this port but could not find a living soul. They went to the oven, where some girls were busy making bread. Taken by surprise and seeing that they would be taken slaves, the girls attacked the Turks with the wood there was at the oven and emptied at them whole sacks of corn and flour. In theconfusion which ensued, all the girls save one managed to escape. A Turk went towards the remaining girl, but she caught up a fig lump of dough and flung it at his face, after which she too escaped. All this gave time to some local men and lads to come and attack the Turks with knives, spades and axes. It is said that only one out of every four Turks went back to his gallery.
In the year 1726 there was a foreign schooner in the port. one of the crew paid a visit to the church, where he was struck by a precious altar-cloth. He waited there, feigning that he was praying, and, as soon as all the people had left, he took off the altar-cloth from its place and brought it to the ship. Nobody had noticed it, but, when the captain decided to leave the port, nothing could move the schooner from her berth. Only when the thief confessed to what he had done and returned the altar-cloth to St.Paul's church, could the ship leave Marsalforn.
A road on the left leads to two other small inlets: Qbajjar and Xwejni. Also here we have many salt-pans: the large and deep depressions are the reservoirs, which, when filled with sea-water, supply the salt-pans. On the other side of Marsalforn there is a road which goes up the hill to the village of Xaghra.
Marsalforn is a composite word. 'Marsa' is the mimated noun of an obsolete Arabic verb rasa'a meaning 'to be at anchor', hence marsa means a 'harbour where ships come to anchor. 'Forn' means 'a bakery' or 'forna', a term used by Gozitan fishermen to this day to refer to 'a cave in a rock hollowed out by the sea'.
The emblem of Marsalforn consists of a belfry with the sea in the background on a sky blue field with part of a fishcing boat in the foreground: a viper emerging from fire in the middle of a silver chief. The berfry of Sain Paul Church is a landmark of Marsalforn; with le the viper refers to the episode invoving Siant Paul just after his shipwreck on Malta.
Marsalforn and its graceful setting make colourful subjects for photography, and being a popular summer resort, it has grown considerably of recent years.