St John's: Sacred spaces and fundamentalist approaches

At a meeting held at the premises of Din l-Art Ħelwa, Edward Bencini, consultant architect to St John's Co-Cathedral Foundation, gave a presentation to NGOs and other associations on the proposed expansion of St John's Co-Cathedral Museum. The proposed project had already been informally discussed with the Malta Environment and Planning Authority and formal applications for development permits had already been submitted to it. The Foundation's chairman and members attended the presentation, as did the curator of the Co-Cathedral, who also happens to sit on the council of Din l-Art Ħelwa. I attended on the invitation of one of the NGOs. I will be limiting myself to considering the Foundation's two applications submitted earlier this year.

The first is Application PA0167/08 "to extend St John's Museum by demolishing post-war structures and constructing a three-storey structure over existing courtyard, providing access to all and other miscellaneous alterations".

The post-war structures the Foundation has applied to demolish are the pleasantly designed arches flanking Merchants Street enclosing the cemetery where the slain of the Great Siege of 1565 rest. The Foundation is proposing to turn this site into a visitors centre comprising the Co-Cathedral's and the Museum's main entrance, ticketing booths, sales points for calendars, postcards, souvenirs, etc. and a cafeteria. The Foundation is proposing to install a glass canopy over the cemetery to shelter the visitor centre and attendant commercial activities from the weather.

The Foundation's proposal is a gross violation of a space that is sacred to our heritage, history and Christian values. The Great Siege was one of the great defining points in our history and in the history of Europe's Christian Heritage. The graveyard is the burial place of those members of the Order of St John, knights and other persons who sacrificed their lives in the defence of Christendom not only in Malta but also in the whole of Europe. This site is a war grave: a sacred precinct of great historical and cultural significance. It is also a significant site in the history of Europe's Christian heritage. Installing a visitors centre is a desecration of the site and very offensive to persons who value our culture, history and religious heritage.

I, therefore, cannot understand how elements in the Maltese Church seem to have lost their sense of values and accept the desecration of this particular site. To persons whose values include the sacrality of such sites, this proposal is simply not an option. It is unacceptable.

It is also unacceptable because St John's Co-Cathedral is a Grade 1 scheduled monument. Grade 1 scheduling means St John's cannot be tampered with in any way. The relevant part of the law clearly states: "Grade 1 buildings of outstanding architectural or historical interest shall be preserved in their entirety. Demolition or alterations which impair the setting or change the external or internal appearance, including anything contained within the curtilage of the building, will not be allowed. Internal structural alterations will only be allowed in exceptional circumstances for keeping the building in active use." I cannot understand how the Foundation expects Mepa to ignore its own scheduling and the law. Mepa must be aware that should it devise any subterfuge to accommodate the Foundation it would be destroying public trust in itself and opening itself and its political masters to devastating public criticism and scorn.

The second application, PA0168/08, proposes "to extend St John's Co-Cathedral Museum by excavating chambers below St John Street, connecting same to existing underground chambers and to construct vertical lift through all floors and other alterations".

In this application the Foundation is proposing to excavate the very recently repaved St John Square and Street up to a depth of not less than 10 metres to create massive underground chambers replicating in size of the nave of the co-cathedral.

The chambers are to extend beneath St John Square and Street from Republic Street right up to Merchants Street, and are to incorporate the water reservoirs excavated in the 16th century during the building of Valletta. In spite of the fact that Mepa had declared that the excavation project is a "non-starter" due to the risk to the stability of the Cathedral and presumably of other buildings in the vicinity, the Foundation has ignored this warning and this project remains the Foundation's preferred project. The excavation of what amounts to a quarry right in the middle of Valletta's cultural and commercial centre with the attendant noise, dust and vibrations, as well as the constant flow of heavy trucks, concrete mixers and other heavy vehicles through the centre of our capital for the years on end that it would take to complete such a project, is surely unsustainable in terms of pollution, air quality and the drastic upheaval to the quality of life of Valletta's resident population and of touristic and commercial activities.

The heavy vehicles would in all probability have to enter and exit Valletta through the recently repaved and pedestrianised Merchants Street.

The Foundation has asserted that it will be skirting the passages and sewers that run under St John's Street. However, their irregular path and varying gradient makes these difficult to locate with absolute precision, while their questionable state of preservation also renders them at risk from the works. These passages are a unique and important part of Valletta's heritage. Valletta is possibly the first city in the world to have had its water system, including the system for the catchment of rain water and a separate system for the disposal of waste water, designed before its houses were actually built.

Much of the system has survived intact and is still functioning and serving the needs of Valletta's residents, traders and visitors. Endangering it would be highly irresponsible and a callous disregard for a World Heritage site and shortsighted treatment of a potential tourist attraction.

In the course of the presentation, several parts of the St John's complex were identified that could be put to better use as exhibition space by relocating activities currently therein undertaken outside the co-cathedral's precincts. It was also suggested that the substantial funds earmarked for this project could be used to purchase and restore a palazzo, which is at present available near St John's Co-Cathedral, as close to the Cathedral as the proposed underground chambers. Such a solution would also benefit Valletta by upgrading that part of Merchants Street.

The Foundation objected to this on the grounds that it does not want to "disperse its collection". The Foundation's objection is difficult to understand. Once the tapestries, liturgical vestments and artefacts are exhibited out of their original context within the Co-Cathedral, their display in an underground museum places them firmly out of their context. Moreover the collection was never a single entity but is a collection of liturgical artefacts acquired over the centuries. This makes it feasible and acceptable for groups of items to be exhibited according to subject matter, with the Gobelin tapestries better accommodated within St John's museum. Restoration laboratories, offices and research rooms may be accommodated elsewhere.

This would have the desired effect of relieving St John's of its present pressure of visitors and would even allow for more revenue collection.

This is accepted practice in many leading cathedrals in Europe, none of which were built to accommodate a museum; Cologne, Florence, Siena, Milan, Vienna, and others all have extensions outside their walls, some at a far greater distance than that being proposed here.

Within the local context, the Foundation could follow the example of the Mdina Cathedral Chapter, when under the wise leadership of the late Mgr Coleiro, it housed its various collections, including liturgical artefacts and vestments, in a building beyond the cathedral's precincts, in the old seminary palazzo.

Only a fundamentalist approach to the St John's Foundation's two Mepa applications would ignore the extreme difficulty they present persons with a sense of values to accept them without question.

Many more questions would arise if one were to consider the desirability or otherwise of stripping the chapels in St John's of liturgical artefacts to display them in a museum, the conditions required for the display of fabrics including tapestries, liturgical vestments etc.

One final thought: Why is it that only the Church's Environment Commission has commented publicly on the Foundation's applications? Surely it should have been the Church's Kummissjoni Patrimonju Kulturali under whose brief tampering with historic monuments falls. This commission, which holds legal consultative status with Mepa, has objected to the Foundation's proposals.