Candles flickered in the January air on Sliema’s promenade on Monday night as scores of people attended a vigil in memory of Paulina Dembska, one year on from her murder.

Dembska, a 29-year-old from Poland, was violently killed in Independence Gardens at the promenade on January 2 of last year. Abner Aquilina, 21, is pleading not guilty to the crime.

The murder horrified the nation and led to a change in legislation that introduced the concept of femicide into the criminal code.

Friends and wellwishers of Dembska’s attended a mass at St Gregory’s Parish Church on Monday to celebrate her memory and then proceeded to a memorial site close to where she was killed, to hold a vigil in her honour.

Before embarking on the silent march to the site of Dembska's memorial, a trumpeter played a mournful tune from the balcony of the San Girgor clubhouse, a stone's throw away from the church.

Attendees walked in silence to the memorial site. One by one, they lit a candle and laid it in front of a picture of Dembska.

"We have limited time on earth, why do we waste it?" asked Andrew Cauchi, who was speaking on behalf of Dembska's family. “Our first wash is done by someone, as is our last," he said.

As a Polish man brought out the country's flag, the crowd applauded.

“No death should go to waste, we need to learn that femicide is unacceptable,” said the man who held up that flag, Tomasz Muzyka.

"The attitude in Malta is still that boys will be boys," he said.

Katarzyna Liszka, who is around Dembska's age, told the crowd that she wants to live “in a society where I feel safe to be out at any time.”

Paulina Dembska, who studied English in Malta.

At the end of the vigil, the crowd sang the Maltese national anthem.

29-year-old Dembska loved Malta and shuttled between it and her native Poland to study English.

She knew the garden where she ended up being killed well. A cat lover, she would often feed the animals in the gardens informally dubbed "the cat garden".

In a tribute printed in Times of Malta, Dembska's parents noted the pain of going through a year since "you haven't called us, it's been a year since you haven't written to us or visited us".

"It's one year of heartbreaking silence! This silence is full of pain, tears, but also beautiful memories with you," they wrote.