The Field
House
Safi, Malta. Three hundred square metres of limestone and glass, standing alone in the fields three kilometres from the runway.
from €24,900
the week, for ten
Safi, Malta. Three hundred square metres of limestone and glass, standing alone in the fields three kilometres from the runway.
Five double bedrooms, arranged around a living room that rises the full height of the house and opens its entire southern wall onto the terrace.
The pool lies outside, long and rectangular, cut into the lawn behind a limestone deck with slatted cabanas shading the beds along its edge. Indoors there is a sauna and a hot tub, which is what makes the house work in February as well as in July.
Beyond the terrace the lawn runs unbroken to the boundary wall — room for twenty to eat outside, or for nobody to be within earshot of anybody else. Showers are set into the stone flank of the house, where you come in from the pool.
One half is raw Maltese limestone — a living room two storeys high with a timber-slatted ceiling, a mezzanine running across it, and a vaulted passage of bare stone leading through to the kitchen. The other half is marble, glass and a black spiral stair, lit from a long skylight. They meet in the middle and the join is the best thing in the building.
The first is a lap pool under a skylight, in smooth plaster and travertine, behind a perforated wall that drops coins of light onto the surface all afternoon. The second sits in a vaulted room of bare stone with a timber ceiling, cooler and darker, with a door that opens straight onto the terrace. Neither depends on the weather, which on this island matters from November to March.
Five double rooms. The bathrooms are not down a corridor — they open straight off the bedrooms behind glass, and one of them has a black tub set in front of a window that holds nothing but fields and sky.
Saturday to Saturday, not by the night. A week is what this house is for: the pools, the kitchen, the long lunch that turns into the evening, the Wednesday you give up and drive to Gozo. One arrival, one departure and one clean is also what keeps the rate where it is.
Seven nights, the whole house
Ten guests across five double rooms.
€2,490 each for the week.
€356 each a night, with the pools, the sauna and the lawn in it.
Rather less than a good hotel room on this island, and you get the island to yourselves.
The rate moves with the season and the week. Tell us your Saturday and we send a firm total, held for 48 hours.
A village of eight hundred people in the south of Malta, at the line where the island stops being a city and turns back into fields. The house stands on its own at the edge of it.
The airport is three kilometres off. You land, and twenty minutes later you are in the water — which on a Friday night flight with children is worth more than any view. Valletta is twelve kilometres north.
Marsaxlokk and its Sunday fish market are ten minutes east. The Blue Grotto is a quarter of an hour west, and the Dingli cliffs a little beyond that. Gozo is an hour and a ferry, and worth the whole day.
Tell us the Saturday you want and who is coming. Within one working day you get the dates confirmed and a firm total, held for 48 hours. Nothing is taken before you have both.
Payment is by bank transfer. Give us the name on the account you are sending from, and quote the reference we send you if your bank lets you — that is how we match your money to your week.
If you would rather talk it through: +1 509 768 2249.