The superb row of Pinto Stores at Valletta Waterfront, offering such an awesome sight to cruise passengers and other visitors to Grand Harbour, has inspired Joe Galea, of Ta' Qali-based Heritage Homes, to come up with another collectible item in his company's series of miniature architectural landmarks.
The miniatures are some of the very few souvenirs and collectibles still made by hand on the island.
After completing his last addition to the Heritage Homes collection - John Barry's Royal Opera House, which used to stand imposingly at the entrance to Valletta - Mr Galea presented Viset, the firm managing Valletta Waterfront, with a three-dimensional model of Pinto Stores that the company is using to promote its facilities at international fairs.
Mr Galea said he spent eight weeks working on the main model, apart from another week of painstaking work on the bastions and the inlet. For the collector, the size of each part of the smaller model is about eight centimetres high. A collector can either buy one or a number of the stores or else the whole 20 pieces made up of the 19 stores and the chapel.
Heritage Homes are preparing a set of the Pinto Stores measuring 18 by 12 centimetres, including the bastions that one can buy as a souvenir.
Shops, restaurants and other outlets at Valletta Waterfront will sell or give away such models as part of their marketing campaigns. Mr Galea said: "Our intention is to make models, including cruise liners that call at the Waterfront, featuring the inlet and the bastions.
"Cruise liner companies would be able to promote the Valletta stop through such an item of baroque splendour.
"The Pinto Stores can be viewed as a magnificent entrance to the beautiful house that is Malta.
"I do not know of a harbour site that was restored so faithfully, recalling the magnificence of the Order of St John. "By offering this souvenir on board, cruise liner companies would trigger a longing for the Valletta Waterfront and for Malta even before passengers disembark," Mr Galea said.
Grand Master Emanuel Pinto (1741-1773), who built the stores, came from one of the noblest families in Portugal. He died aged 92, having survived a plot against him and against the Order by a group of slaves in 1749. According to the plot, one of the Turkish slaves, who was a butler to the Grand Master, had to decapitate Pinto and then display the head in the main balcony of the Grand Master's Palace in Valletta.
This would be the signal for the rest of the conspirators to murder their masters and take over the city on the feast of saints Peter and Paul, L-Imnarja.
In The Life And Times Of Grand Master Pinto 1741-1773 (Midsea Books, 1989), Carmel Testa writes that in order to further boost the activities in Grand Harbour, Pinto built the 19 warehouses at his own expense.
Near the first one, he erected a chapel dedicated to the Flight of the Holy Family to Egypt. A bronze bust of the Grand Master was placed above the portal of the middle warehouse. "When (Pinto's) bust was ceremoniously unveiled on the evening of August 10, 1752, the whole wharf was lit with torches and a water carnival, including a full orchestra on a barge, was held in that part of the Grand Harbour," the author writes.
In The Fleet Of The Order Of St John 1530-1798 (Midsea Books, 1987), Joseph M. Wismayer notes that "the armed forces of the Order as well as an expanding population made it incumbent on the administration to build several storage complexes in and around its shipyards in Cottonera as well as in Valletta and its suburb Floriana.
"The Lascaris and especially the Pinto warehouses built on the water's edge come easily to mind.
"These last mentioned stores built by Grand Master Pinto were beautifully constructed and adorned with baroque-style doorways, cornices, pilasters, corbels, balustrades and balconies and handsome windows complete with pediments and mouldings."