Heritage Malta's exhibition Voyage & Voir – The Travellers of the Grand Tour at the Maritime Museum in Birgu will be closing at the end of September. Voyage & Voir is an exhibition about a journey that young men from rich families in Europe, used to take part in as part of their education and formation.

On exhibit are images, and objects used during the journey. By means of paintings, arms, documents and the many other artefacts on show, one can easily understand and perhaps feel what it was like for these young men to travel around the Mediterranean to visit sites of cultural and historic interest.

Among the more interesting exhibits one finds the diaries of two Maltese young men; Ignazio Saverio Mifsud who went to Rome to study for priesthood, and his friend Gaetano Grima. The two young travellers left Malta for Rome travelling from 26 April to the 15 May 1746. In their diaries they left a record of the places visited, people they met and even the food they ate during the journey.

The exhibition is being organised as part of the Interreg IIIA programme for Malta and Sicily, which aims to strengthen the cultural identity of areas that are geographically close in Europe.

The Voyage & Voir project started in June 2006 in Palazzo Acreide in Sicily with a seminar about the past links between Malta and Sicily. The seminar, organized by Heritage Malta, the Valletta Rehabilitation Project, the Jean Houel Foundation of Syracuse, and the Local Council of Palazzolo Acreide. Between November and January an exhibition about the theme was organised in Siracuse with many artefacts which were lent from the Museum of Archaeology and the Museum of Fine Arts.

The exhibition is open daily from 9am to 5pm. Entrance to the exhibition is free of charge.