One World - Protecting the most significant buildings, monuments and features of the Maltese islands (18)

The Istituto Tecnico Bugeia at Sta Venera was built by the Maltese philanthropist Marquis Vincenzo Bugeia in 1903 to train orphaned children in industrial crafts in order to help them find work later on in life.

The institute contains a museum of craft and light industrial machinery and instruments which were used by the boys that attended or lived in the institute.

This palatial building on three floors is located at the corners of Triq il-Kbira San Ġużepp and Triq Fleur de Lys. It has a palisade boundary wall and an entrance gate. The building has a symmetrical façade with an ornate central bay, accessible through a flight of wide stairs that cross over an open passage below. The main portico projects forward on the façade and is flanked by two small windows and two sets of pilasters. The stone balcony is set within heavily ornate shell motifs, with carved panels at the side between the pilasters. Above is a pediment with dentils, the Bugeja coat-of-arms and foliage carvings. The main staircase is unique in Malta because its walls and ceiling are adorned with mural painted Art Nouveu floral motifs.

There are four sets of windows on each side at ground and first floor, with those on ground floor having a rounded arch and those on the first floor having pediments and balusters.

At the front corners, the façade projects again; each part having a single window in the same style of the other with the same window set-up.

All of the ground floor has grooved joints on the façade. The sides are plain with the windows on the first floor crowned with pediments. The institute is being used as the premises of Ċentru Ħidma Soċjali for persons with physical disabilities and is taken care of by the Board of Trustees of the Conservatorio Vincenzo Bugeia.

Mepa scheduled the Istituto Tecnico Bugeia as a Grade 2 national monument as per Government Notice no. 628/08 in the Government Gazette dated July 12, 2008.