Valletta - St John's Co-Cathedral

The Anglo-Bavarian Chapel is also known as the Chapel of the Relics. Essentially a large niche, it was given to the langue in 1784 and held the principal collection of the knights reliquaries until Napoleon stole them. The bronze gates are from the next chapel, to Philermos. The old wooden figure-head of St John is said to have come from Grand Carrack in which the knights sailed from Rhodes, and evidently had no cash value to Napoleon.

The Chapel of the Blessed Sacrament, also known as Our Lady of Philermos, is a much venerated chapel. The most important remaining work is the Renaissance Cross, dating from 1532. Tradition says the silver gates, which were a gift in 1752 from two knights, were painted black to resemble course iron when Napoleon was looting St John's.

In the Chapel of Auvergne, the only mausoleum belongs to Grand Master Chattes Gessan, whose distinction comes from having had the briefest reign of any grand master, less than four months in 1660.

The altarpiece, between exaggerated barley-twist columns, is of The Martyrdom of St Sebastian, to whom the chapel is dedicated.

This is dedicated to St Paul, and was restored in the 1840s by those who wished to purify Christian art and eradicate the Baroque legacies. The walls and altar were changed and the only principal work to survive is Preti's altarpiece. In the mausolea are a languidly reclining Vicomte de Beaujolais, brother of the future King Lois Phillipe, Grand Masters de Rohan and Adrien de Wignacourt, and his brother Marquis Giochim de Wignacourt.

All except for Vicomte's (and possibly the Marquis's) were badly altered during the anti-Baroque purges.

The Chapel of Italy houses the painting of St Jerome, the second of Caravaggio's works in Malta. It was stolen from St John's Museum in 1984 and recovered in 1987 after which it was restored and returned to its original setting.

Caravaggio's startling, almost photographically precise style, manages to convey both the physical and metaphysical compassion in St Jerome even though the study shows only his face and torso (somehow even St Jerome's talisman, the skull, appears benign).

Provence was the most senior of the langues, and the chapel is dedicated to St Michael. The imperial eagle from Grand Master Lascaris's coat of arms are on the wall and he and his successor, Grand Master de Paule, are both interred here. Their inlaid mausolea are typically ornate. Stairs down to the crypt are to the right as you face the Anglo-Bavarian Chapel.

Walking clockwise beginning to the left of the main door, you can see Cassar's original layout of the chapels. The narrow ambulatory that now exists was cut through the walls on Preti's instigation in the 17th century. The Chapel of Germany is dedicated to the Epiphany. Towards the end of the 17th century Stefano Erardi painted the altarpiece, the Adoration of the Magi and the two lunettes. The white marble altar is the only remaining 17th century Baroque altar in St John's.

In the Crypt are the sarcophagi of 12 Grand Masters, including the Monument of Philippe Villiers de l'Isle Adam, who brought the order of St John from Rhodes to Malta. Adjoining is the Tomb of Jean Parisot de la Valette, founder of Valletta.

The Grand Master's Crypt is not always open and houses the mausolea of the grand masters who reigned from 1522 to 1623, including de la Valette and L'Isle Adam. The only memorial here to a knight below the rank of grand master is dedicated to Sir Oliver Starkey, de la Valette's loyal English secretary.

At the east end of the south isle is the Chapel of the Blessed Sacrament.

The mausoleum in St John is in honor of Italian Grand Master Zondadari, nephew of Pope Alexander VII, who was once an inquisitor in Malta.

The Cathedral Museum contains a number of notable items, including 14 Flemish tapestries after cartoons by Rubens and Poussin.

From outside the oratory, and from some of the museum's upstairs windows, you can see the cemetery where many of the knights killed during the siege of 1565 are buried. The highlight of the museum is a tableaux of 29 fine Flemish tapestries found in its three principal rooms. The three cycles of tapestries are divided into two seven-piece cycles and are all modeled on drawings by Rubens, with the exception of the Last Supper, which was from a Poussin. The cycle tells of the story of Christ from the Annunciation, through his entry into Jerusalem to the Resurrection; the other portrays different allegories including the Triumph of Charity, the Destruction of Idolatry and the Four Evangelists. Additional oblong panels are hung as fillers between the principal square panels and majestically depict the disciples, the Virgin Mary and Christ. The tapestries used to be hung in St John's each year on June 24, the feast of St John the Baptist, but now are used only for special occasions; the last was Pope John Paul II's visit in 1990.

Among the other exhibits and vestments is a collection of antiphonaries (illuminated choral books). There is also a sparse collection of church silverware.

The entire pavement of the nave is made up of more than 400 tessellated tombs of Knights of St John. The earliest, in the Chapel of Aragon, dates from 1602. The symbols range from simple to garish, but each are individual.

One of the memorial slabs by the Republic Street entrance, belongs to French knight Anselmo de Caijs. His inscription translates: "You who tread on me, you will be trodden upon, reflect on that and pray for me."

The oratory of St John's Co-Cathedral in Valletta was built at the request of Grand Master Alof de Wignacourt in 1603, as a place of worship and for adult novices waiting to be admitted to the Order of St John. Until Preti took charge of the decoration in the 1860s, it remained, like St John's itself, clinically functional; the gilding, the painted soffits, Grand Master Carafa's marble altar were all added at Preti's instigation. His Baroque updating was designed around Caravaggio's huge canvas The Beheading of St John's the Baptist, which until then had been illuminated by a window on the eastern flank.

In the Oratory are three pictures by Preti, the "Bearing of the Cross Ecce Homo" and the "Crowning with Thorns.

In the Sacristy, to the left of the main entrance, can be seen old vestments and some fine paintings by Preti.

Antoine de Fairy's terrific portrait of Grand Master Pinto is one of the island's best paintings. Painted in 1747, it tells chromatically and stylistically how far the Order of St John and its magistracy had departed from its crusading hospitaller origins. Dressed in flowing ermine robes, Pinto points at the jeweled crown symbolically placed in front of his redundant steel helmet.

Other works include the late 16th century Baptism of Christ by Matteo Perez d'Aleccio (once St John's titular painting), the old Aragonese altarpiece of St George by Frederico Potenzano, from 1585, a portrait of Grand Master Nicholas Cotoner by Mattia Preti and a portrait of Preti himself.

In what is now the entrance to the sacristy, there was once a chapel for the remainder of the English langue, which ceased to exist after 1540, following Henry VIII's break with Rome. At the foot of the pillar is the painter's tombstone, which was placed there after the grateful Order had made him a Knight of Grace.

A group of some of the most beautiful Spanish and Italian embroidered church vestments from the Renaissance period can be seen here.

As a painter, Carravaggio was defined by his ability to transform religious objects into almost three-dimensional lift, something the prevailing mannerist artists had been unable to do. For many of his contemporaries he had an altogether too realistic style. His use of shadow, halftones and subtle light gives powerful physical presence to his subjects - and nowhere more effectively than in this composition.

The Beheading, often called the painting of the 17th century, is a magnificent picture that captures the tortured emotions of each individual present at the chilling scene, set in the deep shadows of a prison. The old lady gripping her head knows the wrong that has been done, and the jug-eared jailer with outsize keys points to Salome's salver, which she clutches with trepidation. The most haunting image to emerge out of the chiaroscuro is not the pitifully trussed-up St John, but the executioner. From behind his back he stealthily removes a knife from its sheath, to finish the work his sword started. His brow is deeply furrowed and his body taut.

The expressions of the two curious onlookers dramatize the public brutality.

Nikolaus Pevsner, the art historian, states that Mattia Preti's work depicting the life of St John the Baptist in the vault of St John's is "the first realized example of high Baroque art anywhere." The Cotoner brothers, Rafael and Nicolas, grand masters from 1660 to 1680 commissioned the work in 1661. The vault is illuminated by six oval windows and divided into six bays, which in turn are subdivided into three, thereby creating one stone canvas for 18 episodes of the Baptist's life. There are frescoes as well as scenes painted directly on the stone walls. These paintings took five years to complete. The cycle commences on the left of the first bay, by the main door, and ends with the beheading, on the right, above the altar. The figures on either side of the windows are of individual knights and saints revered by the Order of St John.