Valletta is a beautiful city (beyond the first few metres)

I wish to congratulate the mayor of Valletta, Paul Borg Olivier, on becoming the new secretary general of the Nationalist Party. He has certainly worked very hard over the last few years to improve the poor state of our capital city Valletta.

However I do not feel that anything of lasting great note has been achieved. I would like to encourage the next mayor to take into consideration the state of the entrance to Valletta's City Gate. If he or she can do something to improve the uninspiring, filthy, unwelcoming introduction to our World Heritage Site built by the Knights of St John, s/he would then leave a priceless legacy for the whole of Malta.

Every time I enter the city of my birth I feel like hiding my face in shame, especially as I walk through the vast numbers of tourists starting their tours at the entrance. What an introduction, what a first impression! The gate, although many years old, still looks unfinished, a square that doubles as a car park has one of the dirtiest surfaces in Malta and then of course there are the ruins of the Royal Opera House.

It tickled me last week following a group of tourists just arriving from their cruise liner, when the guide jovially told the group: "Please do not look up, down or ahead" as they were passing through the gates. "Valletta is beautiful if you ignore the first one hundred metres or so!"

All so true. The great Grand Master La Valette would turn in his grave if he were to come back to life as a tourist!

How could the powers that were get it so wrong, to destroy a beautiful entrance and replace it by an unfinished pile of stones?