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CHECKING-IN TO | CABANA TRAVEL | WORLD OF CABANA
A hidden Maltese house with Venetian roots and a distinctly Cabana sense of charm, Casa Bonavita brings together baroque grandeur, painterly interiors, lush gardens and unfussy Mediterranean hospitality. In the quiet village of Attard, Sophie Goodwin checks-in to a hotel that's been years in the making, and is well worth the wait.
BY SOPHIE GOODWIN | CABANA TRAVEL | 19 MAY 2026
The hand-painted Valletta Bar at Casa Bonavita, Malta
The smart money on Malta has long been on Valletta: the UNESCO-listed baroque capital, recently wonderfully revived. But Attard, ten minutes inland, is where people who actually know the island tend to reside: a village of narrow limestone streets, handwritten signs advertising oranges from garden groves, and the President quietly installed at San Anton Palace down the road.
Casa Bonavita sits here too, behind an unassuming facade that gives nothing away. Built in 1715 as the country residence of a Francophile family with Venetian roots, it was bought in 2010 by Suzanne and Christopher Sharp (founders of The Rug Company, whose collaborations with Alexander McQueen, Vivienne Westwood, and Marni’s Consuelo Castiglioni made them something of a legend in the design world). The pair have patiently and lovingly transformed it ever since. A decade is a long time to wait for a hotel to open but, having now stayed here, I confirm it was worth the wait.
Owners and restorers of Casa Bonavita, Suzanne and Christopher Sharp.
You enter through the former stables, their walls painted with potted orange trees and fantasy coats of arms, which sets the tone immediately: this is a house that has been done with wit and without anxiety. The hallway has 19th-century frescoed ceilings, baroque furnishings and an Aubusson carpet; the garden beyond that is dense with date palms, classical statuary, hot-pink bougainvillea and a fountain newly primed to flow.
Italian muralists Alfonso Orombelli and Luna Aulehla Greppi spent six weeks on the dining room ceiling alone, restoring the verdant atmosphere of what was once an open courtyard, with results that have the impressionistic softness of Monet’s Deauville, all dappled greens and soft botanicals. Rattan chairs, intimate tables and arches opening onto a flagstone courtyard shaded by orange trees.
One eats very well here; the kitchen is led by Executive Chef Dex Oseman, whose training at The River Café is evident. His dishes are ingredient-led, unfussy, Mediterranean in the most honest sense, and with seasonal Maltese produce handled with classical European technique. The House Kitchen, a lived-in space clad in Sicilian tiles with a Lacanche range, operates on a cheerful open-house policy: pastries baking in the morning, orange tarts cooling on the table, someone always available for tea or something stronger.
The 17 rooms are spread across the main house and two annexes, the seven in the main house being the ones to hold out for. In the former salone mobile, a grand canopied bed sits against marble-effect wallpaper beneath a Maltese balcony that nods to the mashrabiya woodwork of old Cairo. Elsewhere: pineapple sconces, vintage Murano bubble lights, baths in dove-grey marble, and a bathroom installed in the former chapel that requires no further description.
The muralled dining room at Casa Bonavita, Malta.
Ceramic lamps throughout are by Villa Bologna Pottery, the century-old studio next door run by the Sharps’ daughter Sophie Edwards, whose hand-painted fish-shaped glug-glug jugs and birdcage lanterns find their way, charmingly, into the rooms. Many of the paintings – Vesuvius erupting over Pompeii, 1960s works by Julian Trevelyan and Mary Fedden painted on the island, Mediterranean dreamscapes by Maltese artist Kenneth Zammit Tabona – were chosen by son Jamie, an antiques dealer. Across the road, the 19th-century folly has been transformed into a suite with its own pool and palm-lined garden. Ideal for anyone who wants to hide, or be found with some difficulty.
In the evenings, the Valletta Bar is where one gravitates and tends to remain. It's a former kitchen dressed in hand-painted de Gournay panels depicting the 18th-century harbor (black-winged stilts on the foreshore, galleons on the water, inspired by the canvases of Maltese artist Alberto Pullicino), with Dudgeon sofas in chartreuse velvet and 1960s Henry Link bamboo chairs. And a bar menu that runs to club sandwiches and hamburgers. It's reassuringly old-school, and all the better for it.
Then to the spa, reached by descending a subterranean, jewel-toned staircase and entered through studded Sicilian doors. Its walls and floors are glazed in Moroccan tiles, in dragon’s-blood red and black, and a cold plunge and KLAFS SANARIUM® sauna awaits with precise temperature and humidity control. The treatment menu, as with everything here, meets exceptionally high standards with zero pretension.
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