Ride In A Karozzin

In these days, when internal combustion engine is king, the only people who tend to get an opportunity to ride in a horse-drawn carriage are brides and royalty … or royal brides! Not in Malta! Anyone can have a dash at travelling in the most serene form possible and practice dishing out some regal waves to the passing pedestrians.

This is possible thanks to the widespread use, for tourists, of the traditional Maltese horsedrawn carriage – the karozzin. This graceful form of transport was hugely popular with British servicemen in the hay days of the British Empire. This was a time when soldiers and sailors needed to get swift access into the shopping areas of Valletta and, well, yes, sometimes direct to Strait Street, the red light district, which was back then better known as ‘The Gut’.

In this day and age, however, a ride on a karozzin around the city of Valletta has less sinister connotations and provokes much more mundane thoughts.

The capital sits on a peninsula, so almost everywhere you go allows you to see the Mediterranean popping up from different angles. Then there are also the peripheral roads, which provide spectacular panorama after spectacular panorama, as the old horse and its cheerful driver take you along the shore and past Grand Harbour and Marxsamxett Harbour.

Neither will object if you want to stop them to take pictures, but beware of the impromptu commentary that you are given about places and views as you ride past. Unlike official tourist guides, cabbies tend to add their own splash of colour and a little individual flavour to stories and legends that may have no historical substance, but what the hey, they’re still interesting to listen to!

If there’s one drawback to the karozzin, it’s the strange odour that sometimes follows you around on the ride. Horses have natural needs too and, though well-intentioned efforts have been made to solve the problem of on-road deposits, there still has been no agreement between the authorities and the cabbies' union.
So they travel with you!

Whereas once catching a ride on a horse and cart was as easy as catching a taxi in London, that is obviously no longer the case in modern Malta. However, you can still find ‘karozzin stands’ in Valletta, Mdina and in Victoria on Gozo. Rides aren’t cheap, but there are few nicer ways to spend a couple of hours seeing the sights of Malta.