Upper and Lower Barrakka Gardens offer panoramic views of the Grand Harbour in Valletta.
The Upper Barrakka is however more centered and at a much higher level giving the best viewing point of Fort St Angelo just across, which is the present seat of the Knights of St John. This upper garden was in fact the gift of an eighteenth-century knight. The Anglican Garrison Church partly intrudes upon its view.The garden is built on top of a demi-bastion.
The Lower Barrakka Gardens are part of St Christopher’s Bastion and also command a view of the Grand Harbour. At the centre of this garden is a small Greek-style folly built in memory of Governor Sir Alexander Ball, who led the siege against the French in 1800 and subsequently became Britain’s first civil commissioner of Malta. The French during the 1798-1800 siege cultivated these gardens.
