Gozo is just four miles away to the Northwest across a clear blue sea and a very deep channel. The island is connected to Malta by regular car and passenger ferry and a helicopter service. The landscape consists of flat-topped hills, steep valleys and rugged cliffs and villas that nestle among peach, lemon, olive and orange groves. In spring the island comes ablaze with the flowering hibiscus, oleander, mimosa and bougainvillaea. Some of the local crafts (lace and knitwear) are sold from the doorways of houses and on the street. Gozo is where Ulyssses is said to have been held captive entranced by the nymph Calypso. This sister island is almost entirely agricultural and life is simple but comfortable. It is an island of farmers and fishermen and their way of life dominates the character of Gozo.

Gozo meaning "joy" in Castillian, is the name the Aragonese gave this island, when they possesed it in 1282. The idea of joy and pleasure is also conveyed by its Latin motto "Fertilis ab undis caput effero - a fruit land raising its head from the sea". The Phoenicians, when it was theirs in 700BC, called it "Gwl" or Gaulos, meaning a round ship, possibly in reference to the island's shape from a distance, a name which the romans kept when they took it over in 218AD. The Arabs, who came to rule this piece of land a thousand years ago, and who strongly influenced its Semitic language, left behind the name that has stuck in the vernacular: Ghawdex (pronounced Aw-desh).

Gozo's history goes back to 5000BC, when a group from Sicily succeeded in crossing over on some form of sea-craft. These people who first colonised Gozo probably lived in caves around Il-Mixta on Ghajn Abdul Plateau on the outskirts of San Lawrence village, to the north-west of Gozo. This site consists of one huge cave seperated into two by a natural column and a man-made wall. Pottery shreds unearthed on this site are of a purer pedigree than any other pottery found elsewhere in the Maltese islands. This suggests that Gozo might have been settled earlier than Malta.