There is a point, a peninsula, an extension from the island of Malta into the Mediterranean Sea that has been the key strategic position on the island for millennia. It was a modest sized hillock at the tip of the Birgu Peninsula in the earliest times. The Phoenicians in the first half of the first millenium before Christ must have planted on its perched crest by late antiquity.
It wasn’t until the coming of the Knights of the Order of St. John, the Knights of Malta, in 1530 that it was enlarged to become a visible fortification. Today that extensive fortification is known as Fort St Angelo.
The fort has instilled a sense of security in the islanders since its inception. From the 1400s when the corsairs were terrorizing the Mediterranean all the way to the extensive bombing (Malta was the most bombed of all the Allied countries.) by the Axis powers in WW II, the rampart has served as the primary point of Malteze defense.
Today the Birgu peninsula, site of Fort St Angelo, is surrounded by yacht basins.
The rampart that is now Fort St Angelo is still critical to the identity of the Malteze as survivors of exploitation and attack by the Ottoman Turks, the French, the Germans, the British and now by urbanization.
MedFlies 
I love your new boat.
It is a challenge to back into the parking space.