L’arcipelago maltese, crocevia fra le due sponde del Mediterraneo. Riflessioni sulla documentazione monetale

The small Maltese archipelago, consisting of eight islands and a few islets, situated in the Malta Channel 80 km from Sicily, 284 km from Tunisia, 333 km from Libya and 874 km from Athens, has always played a strategic role in the political and economic routes between the eastern and western Mediterranean and between the northern shores of Africa and the southern fringes of Europe. In ancient times, it was therefore a Phoenician, Carthaginian, Roman, possibly Vandal and Byzantine possession. This was followed by Arab, Norman, Swabian, Angevin, Aragonese and Spanish domination. The modern history of the Maltese Islands begins with the settlement, as feudal lords of Emperor Charles 5th, of the Knights Hospitallers of St. John of Jerusalem, who had had to abandon their seat on Rhodes seven years earlier due to the Arab conquest. Conquered by Napoleon's troops in 1798, only two years later they were captured by the British, in whose orbit they remained until independence was achieved in 1964. The contribution outlines the framework of monetary circulation on the archipelago in the Classical and Post-Classical periods, during which it alternately became a receiver of coins produced by other issuing authorities, often established on either side of the Mediterranean (Africa and Sicily), but also a producer of coinage itself, first in the Roman Republican period and later during the long rule of the Knights.