Medieval palace in the silent city of Mdina, one of the best-preserved historic houses in Malta. Houses Captain Olof Gollcher's collection of art, silver, and antiquities spanning the medieval period through the Knights of Malta era. The building itself dates to the 13th century.
About This Site
Palazzo Falson stands on Villegaignon Street in the heart of Mdina, Malta's ancient walled capital. The oldest parts of the building date to the 13th century, when a single-storey house rose on the ruins of a structure known as La Rocca, itself built over a former synagogue. The ground floor of the present palazzo was constructed around 1495 in the Siculo-Norman style, and the Falsone family, holders of important administrative roles in Mdina, carried out further enlargements through the 16th century. It was long known as 'the Norman house'.
The building's most significant historical moment came on 13 November 1530, when Grand Master Philippe Villiers de L'Isle-Adam visited the palazzo for a banquet following a formal ceremony in which he took possession of Mdina on behalf of the Knights of St. John. The event, documented by Giovanni Francesco Abela in his 1647 work Della Descrittione di Malta, marked the beginning of the Order's rule over the Maltese islands after their expulsion from Rhodes by Sultan Suleiman in 1522. De Villiers lived in the house for a while.
In the 20th century, the palazzo was acquired by Captain Olof Frederick Gollcher, a Maltese-Swedish collector who filled the house with European art, arms, armour, silver, Oriental rugs, and historical documents spanning the 15th through 20th centuries. Among his library is a 1728 History of the Knights of Malta.
Since 2007 the palazzo has operated as a historic house museum managed by the Fondazzjoni Patrimonju Malti.
Connection to Oak Island
During Season 12 of The Curse of Oak Island, the Oak Island fellowship traveled to Malta to investigate possible links between the Knights of Malta and Oak Island. Researcher and author Corjan Mol led a presentation at Palazzo Falson in which he outlined what he described as a "Generations Game," a chain of custody for treasure and sacred relics that passed through the hands of military orders across centuries and continents. The presentation traced the De Villiers family's involvement from Jerusalem and Acre through Paris, Rhodes, and finally Malta, where Philippe Villiers de L'Isle-Adam established the Order in 1530. The critical link to Nova Scotia runs through Isaac de Razilly, a French colonizer who founded a fort roughly 15 to 20 miles from Oak Island in the 1630s. De Razilly's mother was Catherine de Villiers, placing him within the same family line that had commanded both the Knights Templar and the Knights of Malta for generations. If treasure or relics were entrusted to the De Villiers bloodline after Gerard de Villiers reportedly fled Paris with Templar wealth in 1307, the family's documented presence near Oak Island through De Razilly provides a plausible route for their eventual concealment on the island.
