They beat them to it
Looks like the Order of St John beat the cathedral foundation to it when it came to digging to a depth of several storeys beneath Valletta. Ah, I hear you say. But that’s because Astrid, Helen and Miriam weren’t around.
There are many legends and myths regarding what lies underneath Valletta.
Noel Grima reportsThis is an excerpt from the article, taken from:
http://schoolnet.gov.mt/history/wirt/Kavallieri/bini-belt/UnderneathVal.htm
Everybody has his pet theory: that there are underground links between all the eight auberges, that there is an underground corridor linking the Grand Masters’ palace to the Manoel Theatre, that there are even corridors linking Valletta to Cottonera, Valletta to Manoel Island, and so on. People tell all sorts of stories but when you press them, they suddenly become vague and refer to what some old man, long dead, once told them, or they say the war destroyed everything.
There is only one person I know who has spent long hours touring underground Valletta, apart from the hardy Maltacom workers he went with (and who he praises for their courage). He is Edward Said, a young architect who graduated a year ago and who, for his thesis, chose to investigate what lies underneath Valletta. He recently made a presentation to an international gathering of experts at the Vittoriosa Armoury on which this interview is mainly based. An enthusiastic devotee of Malta’s heritage, his studies were greatly helped by the Valletta Rehabilitation Committee.
………
Under St John and Great Siege squares
The thousands of visitors to St John’s never realise what lies under their feet. Just outside St John’s, more precisely underneath the guns on the parvis, there are two huge water reservoirs. The one on the Republic Street side has a narrow passageway that leads to a further, bigger reservoir almost abutting on Republic Street. This is three storeys high and is full of tree-roots. (Those trees planted by the British some 100 years ago, and also those in the National Library square, are doing great harm to building foundations and should be pulled up and relocated somewhere else). Then there is one of Valletta’s largest reservoirs, which lies underneath the Great Siege monument and half of Republic Street in front of the Law Courts. This looks like an underground cathedral some four storeys high. Some think that this was the place from where they got the stone to build St John’s. Before the Great Siege monument was erected in the early 20th century, there used to be a fountain there, which the Maltese called “Tas-Seffud”, that was fed by the cistern just beneath it.
This underground cistern saw the light of day during the Republic Street repaving works in 1997 when the workers broke through part of it and a huge hole appeared. The hole was expertly covered by the Valletta Rehabilitation Project. It is also noteworthy to add that the arches in the cistern show the architectural style of the 16th century, in this case subtly pointed arches. One mysterious thing of note are the stairs inside St John’s leading down to the sewer, the only one such connection to be found.
Under the Archbishop’s Palace
The huge space underneath the Archbishop’s Palace requires some explaining. Bishop Cagliares built the palace during the reign of Grand Master Vasconcellos. That was the time when the knights wanted Valletta all to themselves but the bishop wanted to be present there as well. The knights did not want the bishop to build a palace in Valletta but he appealed to the Pope, who decreed that the bishop could have his palace in Valletta but the dungeons were to remain in Vittoriosa.
The Archbishop’s Palace has a huge space underneath but the impression one gets is that it is work left half-done, as if someone had started digging but was stopped. [Daphne – A 16th-century Astrid, perhaps?] It could be that the bishop had already given orders to start building the dungeons but had to stop when the Pope’s decision came through.
Singularly, for a garden-less Valletta, the Archbishop’s Palace has a wonderful garden behind it. It is surrounded by a high wall and, under the wall, by a quarry-like wall of rock, a sunken garden of peace and tranquillity in the middle of the city.
The Grand Masters’ Palace and square
The Grand Master’s Palace too has quite a huge space underneath and also a maze of tunnels and cisterns. One of these cisterns was used as a control room during the war.
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… at the risk of being called an imbecile …
but wouldn’t such huge holes have been dug before the buildings would have been erected?
Also, if there is a hole the size of the cathedral, can’t that be used to house the tapestries?
Throughout this hole – sorry, I meant whole – business my impression has been that amateurs on either side of the dig/don’t dig divide have screamed louder than the experts. How many of the “dig” parade knew about these underground caverns? How many of the “don’t dig” clan knew about these subterranean dimples? I’d really like to know why this Edward Said chappie kept his mouth shut throughout the whole show… Long ago, an ugly, ugly man called Abraham Lincoln said “Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.” Major exponents in this farce, take note.
[Daphne – I agree with your last point, which is primarily why I kept silent. I don’t feel qualified to speak about the validity of a museum project, because I’m not. I am, however, qualified to speak about the dangerous derailment of correct procedure by a group of possibly well-intentioned but seriously misguided individuals. We are seeing the growth of a line of thinking that runs equivalent to: a man kills his wife; the rest of us think he is obviously guilty, because come on, nobody else could have killed her; so we insist that the state doesn’t bother with the trial because it’s a waste of money (given that he is guilty) and we all go out and lynch him instead, while some people yell from the sidelines, “No, no, that’s not the way to do things.”]
Does this mean that there are spaces which require no excavations? If so, the foundation did really mess up….what kind of research did they do if a graduate knows more than what they presented?
[Daphne – They did know. It was in the plans. But nobody looked because they were too busy listening to Astrid.]
This study confirms what I have been repeating for some months that Valletta is full of huge underground spaces of all shapes and sizes, including underground spaces adjacent to the cathedral itself. And inside the cathedral as well! I was only repeating what is well known by any dilettante and what the “experts” had discovered and reported on. I repeat also that these empty spaces give a good indication of the type of rock that lies below the surface. It wasn’t only the FAA troops who were rash in their conclusions but, unfortunately, also the ‘expert’, who produced a non-report with nothing but opinion and who should have known better.
I guess it beats that film series which used to be screened on Italian station – The Beauty and the Beast – or a name like that. It was about a half-man, half-beast which lived underground in the famous sewers of Paris. I used to love to see it. Could be some half-man, half-beast lives underneath Valletta, plus a whole population and we don’t know about them?
[Daphne – We would have heard the whining by now.]
What a beautiful description by Edward Said, he must have felt like Indiana Jones going through those tunnels. And a brave lad he is too. I know the Maltacom blokes who work the Valletta sector, as I used to work for the same company. I once asked them if I could join them on one of their forays down the manholes. They showed me a small Polaroid photograph of a dead rat which was about one or two feet in length excluding the tail; an empty coke bottle was placed next to it for size relevance. That put an end to my Indiana Jones aspirations!
Does anyone know whether Edward Said was in agreement with the proposed plans for a museum under St. John’s Square?
[Daphne – I know Edward Said, and I know that he will have no wish to be dragged into a ‘for or against’ battle. Some people are embarrassed by this sort of involvement. I cited his opinion here only because he has studied Valletta’s underground situation. I would like him to write about it, in fact, for one of my magazines and we have been talking about this.]
Yes I have read an article, in another magazine, re Edward Said’s investigation of subterranean Valletta. It was very interesting. Believe me, I was not after dragging the man into the battle. All I was after was a professional opinion as to how this subterranean “world” is affected by deep excavation – but I understand his not being too eager to give it, as it is bound to be bandied about one way or another.
QUOTE
Daphne – I agree with your last point, which is primarily why I kept silent.
UNQUOTE
I didn’t get the impression that you kept silent because you were all over the place saying that if they dug holes in Manhattan, London and Athens they can jolly well dig a hole in Valletta as well.
[Daphne – I kept very silent. You will notice that I didn’t write anything at all about this museum project until things came to a head. It is the process by which things came to a head which interests me, rather than the project itself. Any comments I make about the museum at this juncture are made merely to illustrate the dangers of having a pressure group hijack the democratic process. What next – public lynching of those who are ‘obviously’ guilty, to save time and money on trials by jury?]
We have seen the underground passages of Valletta on Xarabank. I know of two blocked passage doors in cellars of big palazzos in the city.