Malta's best-known old tree is the carob of Xemxija, called the thousand-year-old carob, on the Xemxija Heritage Trail above St Paul's Bay. Nobody has dated it, but its trunk measures 7.25 metres round across its stems, and it stands beside a beekeeping site the Romans cut into the rock. The trail is a free public footpath, and buses run to Xemxija from Valletta.
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Carob (Ceratonia siliqua) · 400-1000 years · Xemxija, St Paul's Bay
Malta calls this the thousand-year-old carob, and the best evidence for that number may be a poem. A local guide says the figure comes from verses on the dry-stone wall beneath the tree. Lovin Malta repeated it in 2021, describing the tree as dated around 1,000 years without saying how, and the community map of the island lists it as a natural monument of the same age.
Nobody has dated it properly, so read the thousand as a local claim. What has been measured is the trunk. A trail leaflet from 2006 gives it a girth of 7.25 metres across its several stems, and a carob that size has been growing for several hundred years at least. Somewhere between four centuries and the legend is the honest answer.
It keeps old company either way. The tree stands on the Xemxija Heritage Trail, which follows an old Roman road above St Paul's Bay, directly in front of an apiary the Romans cut into the rock. Whatever its true age, it has spent its whole life beside a beekeeping site older than itself.
The trail is a free public footpath with no opening hours, and the tree is a short walk along it, just past the rock-cut apiary. Malta's buses serve Xemxija, roughly 30 to 45 minutes by road from Valletta. If you know who wrote the poem on the wall, tell us.