Festaval Tourist Village - Malta - Terraced Apartments Built into the Hillside

Abandoned hillside apartments at Festaval Tourist Village in Malta, showing the distinctive terraced construction, graffiti-covered balconies and vegetation gradually reclaiming the former holiday complex.

This photograph shows part of the abandoned Festaval Tourist Village in Malta, highlighting the unusual terraced arrangement of its former holiday apartments. The limestone building is partially concealed by trees and dense vegetation, while the upper balconies and exposed structural supports remain visible against a clear blue Mediterranean sky. Graffiti covers sections of the exterior walls and balcony fronts, and the open doorways reveal the empty interiors of the deserted accommodation units. The building follows the natural slope of the hillside, with its different levels arranged to make use of the available terrain. One particularly interesting architectural feature is the apparent use of the roof of a lower apartment as an outdoor terrace for the accommodation above.

The hillside construction of Festaval Tourist Village illustrates an approach to holiday accommodation designed to integrate multiple residential units into a sloping Mediterranean landscape. By arranging apartments on different levels, the development could take advantage of the natural contours of the land while providing outdoor terraces and potentially unobstructed views from individual accommodation units. This stepped arrangement also helped create a compact holiday village without requiring every building to occupy a separate level plot. Although the complex has since been abandoned, its remaining architecture still reveals elements of the original design and the relationship between the buildings and their surroundings. Over the years, vegetation has spread across the terraces and former pathways, gradually concealing the lower sections of the structures. Graffiti, weathering and the deterioration of exposed surfaces further emphasize the passage of time. This photograph documents one of the more distinctive architectural features of Festaval Tourist Village, offering a glimpse of how the former holiday apartments were incorporated into the Maltese hillside before the complex fell into disrepair.