Science in the City 2025: How Malta’s Past is Rocketing Us into the Future

Valletta’s Republic Street will once again become a living laboratory on Friday 26 September 2025 when Science in the City returns under the banner “Past Forward”. The festival that began in 2012 as a modest EU Researchers’ Night spin-off has mushroomed into the islands’ largest outdoor classroom, drawing 30,000 revellers last year and pumping an estimated €1.2 million into the capital’s bars, hotels and family-run kiosks. This time the programme is deliberately Maltese to the core: think ħobż biż-żejt scented with liquid-nitrogen fog, Phoenician dye workshops in the shadows of the Tritons Fountain, and a drone show that re-creates the Great Siege fireworks using LED constellations instead of gunpowder.

The theme “Past Forward” is more than a catchy slogan. Malta’s University research office spent six months polling 1,200 citizens and discovered that 68 % feel “alienated” from science because it is framed as something imported. “We flipped the narrative,” explains festival coordinator Dr Danielle Farrugia, a physicist born in Żabbar. “Every installation starts with a Maltese artefact—be it a 5,000-year-old temple stone or a 1980s Telemalta switchboard—and then projects where that knowledge can take us.” Visitors will watch AI reconstruct the original colours of the Ġgantija statues, use graphene recycled from worn-out fishing boats to print flexible phone screens, and taste ħelwa tat-Tork flavoured with carob pods toasted in a solar oven designed by MCAST students.

Local businesses are already feeling the ripple. “We’ve ordered 400 extra rabbit pizzas and rebranded our Cisk as ‘Carbonation Demonstration’,” laughs Karl Baldacchino, manager of Trabuxu Bistro tucked inside an 18th-century wine vault. The Malta Hotels and Restaurants Association reports 85 % occupancy for the weekend, while ride-share app eCabs has scheduled 150 additional drivers. Even traditional hawkers are cashing in: 72-year-old Nannu Ġużepp from Senglea has been coached by organisers to explain the crystallisation of sugar using his vintage qubbajd-making equipment. “I’ve been selling nougat for 55 years; now tourists want selfies while I talk supersaturation,” he chuckles.

Crucially, the festival is pushing science beyond the capital. A mobile “Past Forward” truck will spend the preceding week touring Gozo, Żejtun and Rabat, collecting oral histories from elderly villagers about rainwater harvesting, limestone quarrying and lace patterns that follow fractal geometry. These recordings will be woven into an immersive soundscape inside the newly restored Sacra Infermeria, where 200 wireless headphones will guide listeners through 600 years of medical milestones—from the Knights’ herbal remedies to today’s genomic medicine.

Schools are the secret sauce. Over 4,000 students from 42 colleges have been commissioned to build mini-exhibits; St Albert the Great College in Valletta is turning discarded festa banners into a giant kaleidoscope that demonstrates light diffraction, while a Gozo secondary school is retrofitting a traditional dgħajsa with underwater sensors that monitor Posidonia seagrass in real time. “We’re cultivating the next generation of researchers who don’t feel they have to leave the island to be world-class,” says Education Minister Clifton Grima, himself a former chemistry teacher.

Environmental credentials are also being upgraded. Single-use plastics are banned; instead, vendors must use reusable cups tagged with RFID chips that refund 10c when returned. Energy for the main stage will come from a hybrid micro-grid combining photovoltaic panels donated by Maltese start-up SolAqua and second-life batteries salvaged from electric buses. Even the marketing team has gone retro: posters are printed on seed-embedded paper that can later be planted to grow wild thyme—an homage to Malta’s garigue ecosystems.

As the sun sets, the festival will crescendo with “Kant tal-Iżmien”, a choral piece merging medieval Maltese chant with electronic loops generated from CERN data. Conducted by Renzo Spiteri inside St John’s Co-Cathedral, it promises goose-bumps under Caravaggio’s brushstrokes. The message is clear: Malta’s past is not a museum piece but a launchpad. Whether you’re a sceptic who thinks science is “not for people like us” or a PhD candidate hungry for outreach, Republic Street will welcome you with open beakers. Book the babysitter, charge the powerbank and arrive hungry—Nannu Ġużepp’s quantum qubbajd sells out fast.