Mdina's fortified perimeter has enclosed fewer than 300 residents since the Knights of St. John relocated Malta's administrative seat to Valletta in 1571. The walled city occupies a limestone plateau 190 metres above sea level, its bastions and demi-lunes engineered by Italian military architects between 1530 and 1670. Bronze Age pottery shards unearthed beneath Villegaignon Street confirm human settlement dating to 700 BCE, though Mdina's defining silhouette—baroque palazzos pressed against Arab-Norman foundations—belongs to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The Silent City earns its nickname after 18:00, when tour coaches depart and Mdina's narrow lanes empty. Evening light sculpts the honey-toned limestone facades lining Triq Villegaignon and Bastion Square, casting shadows that emphasise the shallow relief of coats-of-arms and baroque cornices. The Main Gate, rebuilt in 1724 under Grand Master António Manoel de Vilhena, frames views across terraced fields toward Mosta's dome and the Mediterranean horizon. St. Paul's Cathedral anchors the civic centre, its Latin-cross interior designed by Maltese architect Lorenzo Gafà and completed in 1702. The cathedral museum holds Dürer engravings and a polychrome wooden altarpiece dated 1520. Mdina's defensive works include ten demi-bastions and a dry moat encircling the plateau's western and southern flanks. The Greeks' Gate, Mdina's second entrance, pierces the eastern rampart and offers direct pedestrian access to Rabat, the extramural suburb that absorbed Mdina's Roman-era footprint. Archaeological evidence beneath Howard Gardens in Rabat reveals insulae and mosaic floors from the Roman municipium known as Melite. The Domus Romana museum, 200 metres beyond the Greeks' Gate, displays peristyle columns and polychrome tesserae recovered from a first-century CE villa. Evening tours navigate the city's principal streets—Triq Villegaignon, Triq San Pawl, Bastion Street—and pause at vantage points along the bastions. The fortifications command views across central Malta, with Valletta's Grand Harbour visible 12 kilometres east on clear evenings. Palazzo Falson, a thirteenth-century residence with Norman foundations, opens to visitors by appointment and houses a private collection of Maltese silver and maritime paintings. Mdina's street grid follows the irregular contours of the plateau, producing abrupt turns and enclosed courtyards that obscure sightlines and create microclimates within the walls. Temperature within the city drops noticeably after sunset, a function of thermal mass and reduced solar gain on the limestone surfaces.