Ta' Saminu Bakery

The Rapa family started this bakery in 1963 — Massamino and Ġanna, the names still attached to the place. Xewkija is the village beneath the Rotunda, and Ta' Saminu sits inside that everyday rhythm: school kids stopping in for pastizzi, neighbours collecting bread that was baking when the sun came up.

The ftira here is the long-shaped kind, hollowed out, filled. You order it across the counter in Maltese or English, both work, and you eat it standing outside while the dome of the Rotunda watches over the village.