Friday, 26th September 2008
Subterranean spaces near co-cathedral (1)
I would like to thank Evarist Saliba for his kind words in his letter (Co-Cathedral Underground Features, September 12). The research was carried out while completing my undergraduate dissertation entitled Subterranean Valletta: An Historical And Descriptive Analysis. Incidentally, I had happened to focus on the variety of underground spaces around St John's Co-Cathedral. May I take this opportunity to emphasise in particular the significance of the sewerage system of Valletta.
By far, the sewers are the most extensive network of underground passages that snake beneath Valletta.
For over four centuries they have been draining every house, auberge and church and channelling the effluent, mostly by gravity, out of the city.
This ingeniously designed system is by far one of the oldest and most interesting civil engineering schemes in existence in Malta, there being strong evidence to suggest that it was for many years unrivalled in Europe.
The only known drainage tunnels at the time were the ancient Roman networks such as the Cloaca Maxima in Rome and the sewers of Italica in Spain, built well over 1,000 years before Laparelli started designs for Valletta.
I strongly appeal to Mepa to extend its good work in scheduling monuments in the city by including those beneath its streets and squares as it did recently for the railway tunnel.
These dank, obscure spaces may not all boast the appealing grandeur and grace of the palaces and churches above ground but they are undoubtedly part and parcel of the city's infrastructure and heritage. Hopefully, the subterranean spaces around the area concerned with St John's project, which apart from the sewers include reservoirs, air-raid shelters and possibly palatial cellars, will be surveyed and studied in detail as part of the EIA requested by Mepa and that they are scheduled accordingly so that their full protection is guaranteed.
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Now the Foundation wants to do even worse. Worse because, not only for the damage the proposed project would inflict, but more importantly the intent.
The Foundation would have thought that these underground ducts are out of sight, and hence out mind. Definitely out of my mind, for until I had read the first contribution by Ms Astrid Vella a few months ago, I had not been aware of underground cisterns.
The only thing I can recall is a large underground space which I saw beneath the site of The Times in Saint Paul street when it was being partially re-built back in the late seventies. Apart from that, I never had any knowledge of the extent of the underground structures of Valletta.
These ducts have a great potential. With their proper restoration, they not only would provide education on the engineering and economic advances of medieval Malta, but also an exciting and memorable underworld experience to visitors.
The St. John's Foundation's view of the passages:"One needs to explain what the tunnels meant," the foundation said (TOM 8.09.08)."They are mainly narrow trenches hewn out of the bedrock for raw sewage to flow through them to an outlet to the sea...Probably they are too narrow to be used for anything else.One needs to weigh what is more important - losing a few metres of sewage trenches that run around St John's street or exhibiting the largest collection of Flemish tapestries in the world."
These views are in sharp contrast to the insights you have given us:"This ingeniously designed system is by far one of the oldest and most interesting civil engineering schemes in existence in Malta,there being strong evidence to suggest that it was for many years unrivalled in Europe."
This tends to confirm that the planned St. John's Cathedral project, which risks irreparable damage to these unique passages, is being planned in isolation, only considering the benefits to the Cathedral's collections, rather than the long-term benefit to the whole of Valletta, its undocumented heritage and touristic potential.