The Street Shrines of Victoria in Victoria, Malta

Filed by Max the Cryptid Reporter

Look up as you walk the old lanes of Victoria, Gozo's capital, and you'll start seeing them: small religious shrines — niċeċ in Maltese — set into house walls and above doorways. Some are elaborate stone niches holding carved saints under Baroque canopies; others are simple painted figures behind glass, with a vase of plastic flowers and a lamp someone still lights at night. There are more than fifty surviving in the town, some over three hundred years old. They were built by householders, not