Blue Lagoon, Comino

Between the island of Comino and its tiny, uninhabited neighbour Cominotto runs a shallow channel with a floor of pale sand, and it is that sand, reflecting the Mediterranean light back through clear water, that gives the Blue Lagoon its unreal turquoise. From above it looks like a strip of glass laid between two brown limestone islands; from a boat anchored in it, the hulls around you seem to hover over their own shadows.

Comino itself is a scrap of land of about 3.5 square kilometres lying between Malta and Gozo, named after the cumin that once grew there, with no cars and almost no permanent residents. The whole island is a nature reserve and bird sanctuary, and its sea cliffs hold breeding colonies of yelkouan shearwaters; parts of the lagoon were declared an area of ecological importance in 2002. Above the lagoon to the south-west rises St Mary's Tower, a square watchtower with corner turrets built in 1618 by the Knights of St John under Grand Master Wignacourt, part of the chain of signal towers that once guarded the channel against corsairs.

The lagoon is best known as a place to swim and snorkel, and the film world has noticed it too: scenes for Swept Away and Helen of Troy were shot here. The colour is at its most intense when the sun is high and the water calm, but the real charm comes early or late in the day, when the boats have gone and the rocky shores of Cominotto can be explored in quiet. Walking the island's dirt tracks up to the tower gives a view over the lagoon, Gozo and Malta together.

Getting there

The Blue Lagoon lies about 11 km from San Pawl il-Baħar (St Paul's Bay) on Malta. Malta International Airport (MLA) is about 24 km away. Comino has no roads for visitors' cars: ferries and boats cross to the lagoon from Ċirkewwa and Marfa at the northern tip of Malta, and from Mġarr harbour on Gozo.