Some people just don't give up
A space worth saving, according to Mrs Vella
The Sunday Telegraph, 9 May
Maltese anger at plans to rebuild Valletta
Malta’s citizens are up in arms over plans to rebuild the centre of their historic capital, which was bombed during World War Two.
By Nick Squires in Valletta
It was built in the 16th century as a city fortress capable of withstanding attacks by marauding Ottoman Turks, but 500 years on a new battle is raging over the future of Valletta, Malta’s historic capital.
A £90 million project envisages transforming the historic entrance to the World Heritage-listed city – a medieval gem which has remained little changed since it was built by the Knights of St John in the 1560s.
The avant-garde plan has been drawn up by world renowned Italian architect Renzo Piano, who has worked on the Pompidou Centre in Paris and Berlin’s Potsdamer Platz. It was given the green light last month by Malta’s government and is due to be completed by 2012 but has sparked a ferocious row among the Mediterranean island’s 400,000 inhabitants.
It entails building a brand new parliament building, tearing down the existing city gate and turning Valletta’s ruined Royal Opera Theatre into an open-air performance space.
The theatre, constructed in 1866, was badly bombed by the Luftwaffe in the siege of Malta during the Second World War and has lain in ruins ever since.
The then British colony was collectively awarded the George Cross by King George VI in 1942 in recognition of its bravery and resistance to the German and Italian onslaught, which brought the island close to starvation and surrender.
Nearly 70 years on, opponents say that the parliament building is an unnecessary vanity project and that the redesigned city gate will bring unacceptable levels of traffic into Valletta’s narrow medieval streets, which are crowded with exquisite Baroque churches and palaces built by the English, French, Italian and German knights of the Order of St John.
Critics want the theatre to be rebuilt as a proper opera house, although British theatre impresario Cameron Mackintosh, whose mother was Maltese and who has a house on the island, has proposed that a new opera venue could be built in the former hospital of the Knights of St John, now known as the Mediterranean Conference Centre.
“This project is going to radically change the face of Valletta,” said Astrid Vella, the leader of a heritage group called Together For A Better Environment. “The arrogance with which it has been passed by parliament, with no proper public consultation, is breathtaking. We are wasting millions on a huge white elephant in the middle of Valletta. Maltese are normally evenly split on issues along polarised political lines between conservatives and socialists, but amazingly they have united in opposition to this project.”
The noisy fiestas and fireworks display which are a big part of summer on Malta would make an open air theatre unworkable, she said. “Maltese fireworks are not just colour and light like in the rest of Europe, they are massive bangs, almost bombardments. It’s like being under siege and it happens every weekend.”
The theatre was designed by British architect Edward Middleton Barry, who planned Covent Garden. It has lain in ruins since it was bombed by the Luftwaffe in 1942. Debate over its future has raged ever since, with no less than 47 attempts to rebuild or refashion the theatre collapsing in the face of bitter opposition.
All that remains of it now are the steps which once led up to a grand entrance hall, battered walls surrounding a grubby concrete square and the graffiti-covered stumps of stone pillars. The whole site is strewn with litter and infested with weeds.
Paris-based Renzo Piano and his Maltese partners, a company called Architecture Project, want to restore the remains and turn them into an open-air performance centre by night, and a public piazza by day.
Steel columns will support a sail-like canopy which will give shelter on the few occasions when it rains and muffle the sound of performances from neighbouring residential areas.
“It will evoke the design of the original building,” said Konrad Buhagiar, a partner with Architecture Project, who gave The Sunday Telegraph a tour of the site. He said demands for the opera house to be rebuilt reflected a stagnated view of the past. “In the 19th century, when it was built, the Maltese were trying to show the British that they were not savages, that they had a Latin culture of their own. It became the focus of local identity. It’s been a political hot potato ever since.”
Proponents say the revamped site will help Malta move away from its reputation as a sun, sea and sand holiday destination, a market in which it faces stiff competition from cheaper countries like Tunisia, and reinvent itself as a cultural attraction.
But a group of 130 local actors and artists has signed a petition of protest, saying that Malta already has several open air arts spaces and that it is crying out for a proper theatre.
“We need an open air performance space like a hole in the head,” said Kenneth Zammit Tabona, a prominent art critic and columnist. “We have loads of them – it’s like taking coals to Newcastle.” It would be better to turn the old theatre into a museum of contemporary art, a public library or a concert hall, he said. “Our orchestra has been homeless for 15 years and the public library is located in a ditch. Some people are calling for a national referendum on this whole project.”
Although Valletta’s existing city gate will be demolished as part of the contentious plan, the architects point out that it dates not from the time of the Knights but from a brutal reconfiguration carried out in the 1960s.
It is indeed something of an eyesore, and will be replaced by huge limestone gate posts more in keeping with the great bastions and curtain walls which encircle Valletta.
The 60ft-wide, asphalt-covered bridge which leads to the city gate, carrying pedestrians above a chasm-like defensive ditch excavated by the Knights, will be stripped back to its much narrower 16th century dimensions.
“We’ll remove the additions made by the British in the 1850s and again in the 1930s and 1960s and bring back the feeling of entering a fortified medieval town,” said Mr Buhagiar.
Just inside the gate, in an open space which has been known since Maltese independence in 1964 as Freedom Square, the new parliament building will be built.
The design has been described by one opposition MP, Carmelo Abela, as “an ugly building built on stilts”.
It will replace the cramped Baroque palace which Malta’s MPs currently use, but opponents say that Valletta has plenty of other large, crumbling palaces which could easily be restored and converted into a parliament, without the need to construct a new building.
“It would be a fraction of the cost and it would serve to revitalise the entire lower half of Valletta, which has become a virtual slum area, neglected for the last century,” said Ms Vella. “Why deprive us of the square? Malta is the most densely built-up country in Europe and every inch of public space is precious.”
Herman Grech, the deputy editor of Malta’s Sunday Times, said he had rarely seen passions run so high on the sun-baked island. “The problem with the Maltese is that we all think we are experts and we all have an opinion about everything,” he said. “People want a fully functioning theatre but this is not the West End and theatre is not exactly thriving. The existing gate is ugly and the square is a glorified car park, so anything beats that. We’ve been discussing this for 65 years. Now that something has been agreed, let’s just do it.”
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The horrible Fascist-style entrance to Valletta was most probably overlooked by the writer, who seems to have been fed by Astrid. The sooner the Piano project is started, the happier the 400.000 Maltese will be. Has Astrid seen the recently-inaugurated Basilica at San Giovanni Rotondo where St. Pio rests? If she has not then I suggest she has a look.
This is my favourite extract from the article. It comes from the world renowned architectural critic Carmelo Abela – the one we would have been blessed to have as the architect of our educational system: tar-repeater class, biex nifthemu.
“The design has been described by one opposition MP, Carmelo Abela, as “an ugly building built on stilts””
The quotes supplied by Astrid are just as good. I cannot understand how she manages such a high number of mistakes in so few words.
Given the Labour MPs’ absurd behaviour in parliament over past days, it would seem that Piano presaged their antics in government by designing a ‘parliament building on stilts’.
And while Britain is trying to resolve a financial crisis by creating a political crisis for itself, there go Astrid and Kenneth alienating the British readers with an irrelevant issue taking place in the former colony.
Some people are really good at seeking attention. Reminds me of the attention received by the Luqa Mayor from the BBC about the Zobb Monument at the time of the Pope’s visit.
Are they all suffering from Attention Seeking Personality Disorder?
The British, especially the English, have other issues worrying them at the moment, not least, their budget deficit and the consequential cuts they have to face in the years ahead.
What is the use of wasting their time with an “arrogant” government in Malta when they themselves have a prime minister and a Labour government that have clung to power and would not let go notwithstanding a severe trouncing by voters?
Next it will be Justyne Caruana and Tarcisio Mifsud pouring out their heart to The Sun, The Guardian, The Financial Times and The Economist about the “corrupt” and “obscene” contract of the Delimara power station.
“A medieval gem which has remained little changed since it was built”.
Come again?
Poor Nick Squires, he must have gotten a right earful from Astrid.
The best comment has to be Herman Grech’s; he really sums up the feelings of the majority about this project.
Kenneth Zammit Tabona says we already have too many squares and Astrid Vella says we don’t have enough.
(I’m assuming that the quote in the third paragraph from last refers to Astrid not Herman Grech; the paragraph divisions are a bit confusing.)
Nick Squires must have hired Astrid Vella’s expertise for guidance writing this report in the Daily Telegraph.
Or, he may have visited the Times archives and selected all the anti-Piano comments as his main sources of misinformation.
But surely in his few days visit to Valletta he clearly understood everything his tour guide may have fed him.
@jomar
“…he clearly understood everything…”
Like, as HP Baxxter noted above, that Valletta is a medieval gem. You have to have a wide oesophagus to swallow that one.
Interesting to note that rather than use the title “director”, “manager”, “chairwoman”, “spokesperson” etc. they called Astrid the “leader” of the FAA. Which to my mind suggests Astrid as being a dictator of sorts, and the FAA as mob that blindly follows her around. Very apt.
[Daphne – Idiomatic English uses the word leader for any group, including political parties.]
“…plans to rebuild Valletta”? Like the whole of the city? What a misleading title!
English knights? Who were they?
Nicholas Upton, Oliver Starkey… that’s all, I think.
Er, Sir Oliver Starkey.
Isaac Newton, the one who studied the concept of gravity, was an English knight – though he had no relation neither with the order of St John nor with Valletta. Maybe Astrid and her friends mentioned this English knight to Nick Squires in connection with something like “jaqa’ il-Gvern” perhaps when discussing the Piano Parliament?
I would have mentioned Guy Fawkes. Not a knight, but he was sick of the charades and attention-whoring by MPs and wanted to blow up the whole lot. Piano’s genius is to have our building on stilts. Saves us all the tunnelling, eh?
There is nothing to ‘discuss’. Astrid, next time just vote for Joseph and your ‘wishes will come true`.
Better a “huge white elephant” than an irritating, pestiferous mosquito – any day.
Wharever it is, a PIANO project is always a world-wide attraction
All this sounds like children bickering in the playground.
If The People want an open space, Mintoff’s block of flats should be the place.
Well, I do not know if the reallocation of the shops and tenants is even possible or legal but it would make much more sense if all of the 60s eyesore would be part of new project.
I like to imagine what would have happened in Paris had the FAA been around when the idea of building a huge iron pylon in the middle of the city to commemorate the Paris Expo popped into M. Eiffel’s head.
I’d also like to ask Astrid, who says “Maltese fireworks are not just colour and light like in the rest of Europe, they are massive bangs, almost bombardments. It’s like being under siege and it happens every weekend” just why she and the FAA haven’t held any protest marches against what she terms ‘bombardments’ which are far more harmful to the environment than a new parliament building.
Even when I lived in Malta, I rarely went to Valletta more than once or twice a year, so, if it really is so terrible, I’m sure I could avert my gaze for a couple of minutes as I pass by and that would deal with the problem. Fireworks, on the other hand are a widespread, persistent plague which do no good and cause untold stress to many many people and animals and are a cause well worth fighting.
It’s pretty obvious that there is no way the FAA will go marching into Lija, Gharghur or Zejtun with a huge banner saying ‘Le ghall-murtali’ during festa week. That would take some guts.
So, our brave defenders of the environment are content to do nothing and remain ‘under siege’ ‘every weekend’.
Tim, you refer to that metal pylon in the middle of Paris, which is about 320 metres high. Did you not notice the fuss made here about a 3-metre colonna mediterranea in a non-central place called Luqa?
Any fool can criticize, condemn, and complain — and most fools do. ~ Dale Carnegie
La mamma degli ignoranti e sempre incinta.
Astrid Vella: “Maltese are normally evenly split on issues along polarised political lines between conservatives and socialists, but amazingly they have united in opposition to this project.”
Yup, the Maltese have all united in opposition to this project, and there they all were marching in their hundred(s?) behind her during an awe inspiring protest/ pastizzata in Valletta.
By the way, so sorry, couldn’t make it on the day. I’m confident my presence would have upped the kotra enormi by all of 1%.