About Piazza San Giorgio

Piazza San Giorgio, Valletta's Grande Place, is very much in the headlines. After many years of degradation during which it was paved with yard tiles and turned into a car park cum cab-stand, it was decided to revitalise it. So far so good.

The original idea was to excavate the whole area and to provide alternative underground parking and other facilities. The discovery of a couple of buried passages (apparently already well known to the Valletta Rehabilitation Committee) and a couple of drains - certainly a great part of our heritage - hastily turned the ambitious project into a face lift, or rather, a floor lift.

The new project was taken in hand as soon as it was announced and has not impressed many. The esteemed architectural historian Conrad Thake has labelled it a cut-and-paste project. Others have been even more critical, clamouring for something more dignified. But I think we are talking of cosmetics rather than considering the essence of the matter.

Valletta is a Baroque city with many fine Baroque buildings and streetscapes, but it is not particularly notable for its Baroque open spaces.

The design of such spaces, in the so-called Grand Manner, has its own special techniques to convey a sense of enclosure, identity, harmony, proportion and drama.

A CIAM congress spokesman once compared the successful design of an urban open space to the old and rather foolish definition of a cannon: "Take a round hole and..." The space has to be a framed, sculptured experience and not an incidental residual void between buildings. The planimetric aspect, based on spatial considerations, has to be complemented by well-proportioned vertical aspects. Too high and you get claustrophobia; too low and you have agoraphobia. One-third to one-fourth the horizontal dimension was considered a favoured proportion.

The great architects of the Renaissance and Baroque periods made masterpieces of their piazzas: Michelangelo with his Piazza del Campidoglio using the subtle Cordonata and the slewed lateral wings for dynamic effect; Jules Hardouin Mansart's faceted, elegant and symmetrical though rather awe-inspiring Place Vendome; Gian Lorenzo Bernini, with his flowing scenographic colonnades in Piazza San Pietro.

In Malta, with the Order's set-up of its foreign military engineers as the town planners and the Maltese periti as the architects of the individual buildings, the design of the piazzas themselves seems to have fallen between two stools. Valletta's Republic Square (better known as Piazza Regina and earlier as Piazza dei Cavalieri) is the one that comes nearest to the Baroque ideal.

It has porticos on two sides and two closed corners; but then it has a wide thoroughfare at the other end. Independence Square, the old Piazza Celsi, with low harmonious buildings on all four sides and one closed corner, is small but pleasant enough. But it is also square, which a square should not be!

Palace Square, or Piazza San Giorgio, to give it its original name, has roughly the proportions of the golden mean and is flanked by the Magisterial Palace on one of its longer sides.

With its centrality and historical associations it has all the credentials for being Valletta's (and Malta's) premier Baroque square. Its four corners are at slightly different levels but its major defect is that the side facing the palace is much too low as a backdrop, breaking up the sense of enclosure which is fundamental for a Baroque square.

Originally the building which we call the Main Guard may have been purposely kept low to allow the Grand Master an open view across to Marsamuscetto. The dominance of the Palace was placed above the architectural qualities of the square. But now a warren of ramshackle constructions, washrooms, roof tanks and TV aerials have sprouted over the skyline of the Main Guard building.

They are ugly enough as seen from ground level, but they are terrible when seen from the palace balconies.

For the dignity of Valletta and the Presidential Palace it is necessary to screen this unseemly dirty linen and at the same time to complete the enclosure of the piazza. This can be done by raising the height of the Main Guard building roughly to the level of the Casino Maltese on its left, which would be two low floors or one lofty (piano nobile) floor.

In the process this would provide a prime site with a gross footprint of about 1,750 square metres. As all the underlying property is understood to belong to the government, the possibilities are endless. Such a prestigious site would have been ideal for Parliament but I am afraid a different decision has already been taken. The male lingue say that due to the credit crunch Parliament has been shunted to the bus terminus so that the members can come by bus!

I am told that in the 1920s there was also a proposal to adapt and extend the Main Guard building to house the Senate and the Legislative Assembly. Apparently imperial interests (Big Brother) ruled otherwise. There are now various other options such as EU or other diplomatic bodies or missions to choose from.

I can also see it as a Municipio or a Hotel de Ville or as our local equivalent. It could also be a money-spinning bit of estate management, which is not to be sneezed at. But the main point is to give the piazza its dignity and its integrity.

Mr Zammit, who has just published the book Our Architects, lectured on Town Planning and Urban Studies at university.