The Blue Hole, Gozo: Diving Malta's Famous Site

The Blue Hole at Dwejra is the most photographed dive site in Malta, and one of the few natural formations in the Mediterranean that genuinely earns the attention. It is also routinely confused with a completely different site of the same name in Egypt, which is worth clearing up before anything else.

What it actually is

A shaft in the limestone shelf on Gozo's west coast, about 10 metres across and 15 deep, open to the sky and filled with startlingly clear water. At around 8 metres, an arch in its seaward wall connects it to the open sea.

The standard dive descends inside the hole, passes out through the arch, and turns along a wall that drops away past 50 metres into blue. You work the wall at whatever depth your plan allows, then return through the arch and surface inside the hole. Total depth is entirely your choice, which is why the site suits both a newly qualified diver and someone with a technical ticket.

Inside the hole itself the light is the attraction: on a bright day the shaft glows turquoise and the arch reads as a bright doorway from within.

The Azure Window, and what is left of it

Until March 2017 the Blue Hole sat beside the Azure Window, a limestone arch that was Gozo's most famous landmark and appeared in more film footage than any other rock in the Mediterranean. A storm brought it down into the sea.

What remains is now a dive. The Azure Reef is the rubble field, huge blocks scattered between roughly 15 and 45 metres, and it has become one of the more unusual dives in Europe: a landmark that used to be photographed from above, now swum through. Coral and sponge growth is establishing on the blocks, and the site is regularly dived on the same trip as the hole.

Not the Dahab Blue Hole

This distinction is worth stating plainly, because the two sites share a name and almost nothing else.

Gozo's Blue Hole is shallow, its arch is at 8 metres, and the standard route is an ordinary recreational dive.

Dahab's Blue Hole in Egypt is a 100-metre shaft whose Arch is a 26-metre tunnel with its base at 55 metres, far beyond recreational limits, and it has killed a significant number of divers who attempted it untrained. The memorial plaques there are not decoration.

Divers researching one and reading about the other is a real problem. If a Gozo centre offers you the Blue Hole, they are not offering you the Egyptian dive.

The parts that actually need care

The entry is the hazard, not the depth. Reaching the hole means walking down and across uneven rock in full gear, and it is genuinely awkward; a lot of minor injuries at this site happen before anyone gets wet.

Sea state decides everything. In swell the hole surges, the arch becomes a place you do not want to be timing your exit, and the entry turns dangerous. Maltese centres cancel Dwejra often, and a centre that runs it in marginal conditions is telling you something about how it operates.

Fitting it in

Dwejra is on Gozo's west coast, a short drive from the ferry, and usually dived as a shore day combined with the Azure Reef or the Inland Sea tunnel next door. Divers basing on Gozo often pair it with the wrecks at Xatt l-Ahmar on the south coast for a week that never needs a boat.

Season, costs and the rest of the islands are in our Malta diving guide.