Valletta car park project dropped

The government yesterday decided to scrap plans for an underground car park in St George's Square, Valletta after the discovery of a network of subterranean passageways.

The discovery was made last week when government employees from the Works Division dug through a wall in a small room in Archbishop Street and found the network of tunnels.

After clearing debris and other material, they discovered that the passageway leads to beneath the Main Guard portico, parallel to the Grandmaster's Palace.

Excavation works and studies were undertaken in the square over the past months in preparation for the building of the one-storey underground car park and the subsequent embellishment of the square.

The project, piloted by the Works Division and the Valletta Rehabilitation Project, still needed to be given the green light by the Malta Environment and Planning Authority.

The studies were carried out under the surveillance of the Superintendence of Cultural Heritage.

"Now that investigations concluded that these tunnels are of cultural heritage value, the ministry will not embark on the car park project but will proceed on the embellishment project of the square, at the discretion of the Malta Environment and Planning Authority," a spokesman for the Rural Affairs and Resources Ministry said yesterday.

Meanwhile, the Valletta Rehabilitation Project has undertaken an extensive research exercise to plot out the developments of the square since it was first built.

Old documents and plans have provided valuable information on what happened in the square and the different uses it had, including the installation of the Wignacourt Fountain, the extension of the Main Guard portico and the square's gradual development.

The archives, however, never indicated any shelters or significant structures underneath, although a number of historians or locals have recalled members of their family entering shelters from one of the corners of the square.

The presence of the tunnels, however, was flagged by the environmental lobby group Flimkien Għal Ambjent Aħjar during a consultation meeting on the proposed car park.

The ministry spokesman said the studies through which the tunnels were found followed a standard systematic procedure adopted in any studies on such sensitive sites.

The Works Division is now awaiting the green light from Mepa to continue with the embellishment project of St George's Square.