Excerpts from Books and Wikipedia
"The final component of Mediterranean Europe is the ministate of Malta, a cluster of five islands located just to the south of Sicily (Fig. 4-23). Although Malta contains merely 420,000 inhabitants, its history is that of a crossroads at the very center of the Mediterranean Sea, a cultural nexus that received infusions from Britain (as a former dependency), Italy, North Africa, and Southwest Asia. As an EU member since 2004, Malta enjoys a comparatively high standard of living reinforced by a thriving tourist industry." [Geography: Realms, Regions, and Concepts, 17th Edition, p. 185]