The Lascaris War Rooms: Discover Malta’s WWII War HQ

10 Interesting Facts about the Lascaris War Rooms

1. The Lascaris War Rooms are a system of underground tunnels and chambers 150ft (45.72m) beneath the Upper Barrakka Gardens and the Saluting Battery.
2. They were built between 1940 and 1943, so some of you may remember them coming around, or know someone that does!
3. Their name is derived from the nearby Lascaris Battery – which itself was named after the Italian Grandmaster Giovanni Paolo Lascaris who had commissioned a garden on the site later occupied by the battery. See, how history comes full circle?
4. Each of the fighting services had an operation room here:
   – The Navy Plotting Room was responsible for the fleets
   – The Anti-Aircraft Guns Operations Room led the air defence
   – The Coast Defence Room devised defensive operations in case of amphibious
   invasions
   – The Filter Room communicated important data received from a variety of locations,
   including the naval station in the Auberge de Castille
   – The Combined Operations Room housed the encryption machines used to send
   and receive secret communications and was heavily guarded.
5. About a 1,000 people worked in the Rooms during the War, and they all breathed mechanically ventilated air (since the complex is underground). And guess what? This original feature still works today!
6. In 1943, General Eisenhower and his Supreme Commanders (Admiral Cunningham, Field Marshal Montgomery, and Air Marshal Tedder) advanced and directed the Allied invasion of Sicily from these very Rooms – known as Operation Husky.
7. When the War ended, the Lascaris War Rooms became the headquarters for the Royal Navy’s Mediterranean Fleet and played a crucial role during the Suez Crisis of 1956, as well as going on full alert for several days during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 (a Soviet missile against Malta was expected at the time).
8. They were later taken over by NATO in 1967 and used for ten years as a strategic Communication Centre in order to intercept Soviet submarines in the Mediterranean.
9. The Lascaris War Rooms are twinned with RAF Northolt, Ruislip, and Middlesex in the UK.
10. It currently houses two war time tanks on display (a ‘Matilda’ and an “M3 Stuart’) from the small tank force of five different tanks that the British had during the Second World War.’