Quarantine hospital or quality casino?

The article on the Manoel Island Lazzaretto of San Rocco (September 4) is about the architectural works planned by the consortium in charge and the expenditure of €30 million for the refurbishment programme. It is very impressive but the article does not mention what the Lazzaretto will be turned into.

One of the consortium website reports, says: "The Lazzaretto will also be refurbished to accommodate a number of recreational services, including a quality casino and an adjacent boutique hotel... Furthermore, a representative of Fondazzjoni Wirt Artna is supervising works to ensure restoration is properly accomplished, etc..."

How about "supervising" its future too? Perhaps turn part of it into The Plague Museum or The Lazzaretto Exhibition Hall or Malta And Its Epidemics Museum, for example?

In 1986, I worked on a five-year research project concerning the Lazzaretto and the 1675-76 Bubonic Plague in Malta which claimed over 11,000 victims.

I have a lot of material which I would very willingly donate to the "restored" Lazzaretto in case an area will eventually and hopefully be created for that purpose. I know the place very well, as I have been there several times in the past to take pictures, etc... The softness of the stone of its walls has induced many of its inmates to carve their names which are generally accompanied by the date and duration of their stay in this isolation hospital.

A wall on one of its roofs still displays numerous etched graffiti in various languages.

There are some interesting old Spanish inscriptions of which I have the English translation. Some graffiti date from the time of the Knights and reveal the frustration under which the inmates held in quarantine had to live. The yard with all these priceless graffiti should be roofed so as to be protected against the elements.

The Lazzaretto is one of the oldest existing buildings erected by the Order of St John, its origins going back to 1643 during the rule of Grand Master Lascaris.

In the days of steamships, the Lazzaretto formed a major link in the Mediterranean in the chain of quarantine hospitals that stretched from Gibraltar to Marseilles and Venice in southern Europe, and to Alexandria and Constantinople in the Middle East.

I humbly appeal to the public, Antiquities Committee, Fondazzjoni Wirt Artna, Ministry of Culture, Mepa: the Lazzaretto is part of our Maltese heritage and it is very important to preserve its identity without turning it into something different from its origins. After refurbishment is ready, planned money-making should not be achieved at the expense of our heritage. After refurbishment is ready it will be too late to change things. Authorities should make sure that the historical value of an old building should not be used by others solely to make future valuable profits. What will future Maltese generations be left with, if old sites are turned into modern establishments?