St Paul the Hermit Chapel

Set in Wied il-għasel, this chapel is one of Mosta’s most distinctive sacred sites: a small cave church dedicated to St Paul of Thebes, with an attached rock cut Marian chapel. The surviving structure is seventeenth century, but the site is attested by 1575, and it still appears in the current listings of Mosta Parish, with annual observances for St Paul the Hermit and Our Lady of Graces.

Origins

Material preserved by the University of Malta shows that the earliest reference comes from the apostolic visitation of 1575. By the mid seventeenth century, the church was already described as standing beneath overhanging rock and bearing imagery of St Paul the Hermit, the Virgin, and St Anthony the Abbot. A concise Kappelli synopsis states that the present chapel was built in 1656 on the site of an older one.

Fabric

The scholarly description is unusually precise. The chapel is oriented east to west and appears externally as an almost cubic building with a plain front, a central doorway between barred windows, a side entrance, and a small bell cot above the gable. Inside is a single nave, 9.45 by 4.47 metres, barrel vaulted with five ribs. From within it opens an almost entirely rock cut chapel of the Virgin, dated to 1656.

Artworks and restoration

The chapel’s imagery joins St Paul the Hermit with St Anthony, while the inner Marian space is linked with Our Lady of Graces. Kappelli records that the original paintings of Our Lady of Graces and St Paul the Hermit were later moved to the parish church and replaced by copies in situ. In 1920 the site entered a renewed phase of care, with a new rector adding a white marble altar to Our Lady of Graces and a parvis enclosed by iron railing and gate, as also noted on Kappelli.

Present status

Current parish information still lists the chapel among the chapels of Mosta, under the archpriest, and marks its annual feast on the Sunday after 15 January, together with the feast of Our Lady of Graces. Parish reporting also records a later restoration after vandalism destroyed an earlier stone altar, with a replacement copy installed when the chapel was restored