The Citadel in ancient and recent history

Two exhibitions are being held at the Gozo National Archives as part of the National Archives Awareness Week.

The first exhibition consists of 25 important items ranging from maps to written documents related to the Citadel of Gozo. The second, entitled The Gozo Citadel in the 1980s, consists of 350 photos by Daniel Cilia. The exhibitions will run to November 3.

To mark the event, a catalogue has been published as well as a commemorative postcard depicting the Gozo Citadel in 1536. There are just 200 numbered postcards of an artistic impression of the Citadel, as shown in the map of Malta and Gozo reproduced by Jean Quintin D'Autun in 1536, said Fr Joe Bezzina, the curator of the Gozo National Archives.

Fr Bezzina, an archivist by profession, had set the ball rolling to set up the archives in August 1989, when he began working part-time with the Ministry for Gozo on the project.

The first documents to be moved in were the registers of the former Universitas Gaudisii - an administrative body founded around 1350 to manage the island and defend local interests. Only 260 registers, dating from 1560 to its suppression in 1818, are still preserved.

The archive, housed in a purposely built hall adjacent to the Public Library, was conceived as the public record office for the documentation produced and received by past and present government departments and establishments in the islands of Gozo and Comino.

Fr Bezzina said the Gozo Citadel has been known by many names throughout the centuries. The early names of Gozo - Gwl, in Punic times (700-218 BC), and Gaulus, Gaulos and Gaudos in Roman (218 bc-ad 530) and Byzantine (530-870) times - referred both to the whole of Gozo as well as to the Citadel, the island's only fortified settlement.

The Arabs, who took possession of Malta in 870, called the Citadel Mdina. From the middle of the 14th century, the Citadel was called Terra.

The Citadel is first referred to as the Cité du Goze, the city of Gozo, by the short-lived French administration (June-October 1798). During the early British rule (1800-1964), it continued to be referred to as Castello or Gran Castello in official documents. Eventually, it became known as the Citadel, and in Maltese as ic-Cittadella.

"The exhibition The Citadel, the crown of Gozo, reflects this history and more," Fr Bezzina said.