Conceived during the final years of Zaha Hadid's life and completed in 2024, the Mercury Towers development in St. Julian's gave ME Malta by Meliá one of the most formally ambitious buildings to rise above the Maltese coastline in decades. Zaha Hadid Architects, with interiors led by Kar-Hwa Ho, shaped a 20-floor tower whose defining move is a structural twist between the ninth and eleventh floors, rotating the upper mass against the lower podium in a way that reads as the building drawing breath before it climbs. White-painted continuous balcony bands curve and swell around the facade, their fluid rhythm a direct expression of ZHA's surface geometry rather than applied ornament. At ground level, the restored 1903 Mercury House facades have been absorbed into the development's base, the Edwardian masonry pressed into service as a threshold between the street's older grain and the tower's sculptural ambition above. Inside, Ho's interiors soften the building's bravado with a palette calibrated for the Mediterranean light flooding through floor-to-ceiling glazing. The 113 rooms and 27 suites show textured linen headboards in pale blue-grey, dark-stained timber bed platforms, and hand-tufted rugs in sand and sea-glass tones that pick up the water visible through almost every window. The rooftop infinity pool terrace is stripped back to limestone deck and cream-cushioned loungers, letting the horizon carry the weight. Up at the top-floor bar, curved banquettes in teal tweed and cylindrical pendant shades in warm brass complete a room where the entire Maltese coastline arrives as the principal decoration.

10-15min drive from Valletta