St Angelo - hallowed ground at risk

Fort St Angelo, better known as the Castrum Maris in the late mediaeval period, hallowed ground symbolising Malta's chequered history, a perennial enclave of European sophistication and the focal point of Malta's celebrations marking our accession to the European Union a few years ago, is at great risk. The SOS emanating from Heritage Malta, recent guardians of the lower part of Fort St Angelo, highlighting the dangerous state of the lower Fort, is bewildering, sending shock waves throughout the ever-expanding history-loving community of the Maltese islands.

This state of affairs has been long in coming. The utter neglect and desuetude of lower St Angelo since the departure of the Royal Navy in 1979 has definitely not been in tune with its erstwhile role throughout our maritime history. Unlike the upper fortifications whose decaying grandeur was restored by the enterprising Knights of St John as a sign of appreciation of our glorious historic and architectural past, lower St Angelo has for the last 30 years presented a veritable wasteland and a bleak vision of the future. What the might of Islam in 1565 and the savage bombing of the last war have failed to achieve against this "impregnable" fort, our crass indifference, laissez-faire and insensitivity have largely contributed to this imminent danger. With apologies to Dragut I venture to ask, "If Fort St Angelo, the brightest jewel in Malta's line of superb fortifications, has been surrendered so cheaply, so wantonly and so irreverently, what is going to happen to less important sites?". At such juncture the biting words of Professor Jeremy Boissevain ring painfully true. At a recent seminar, the eminent anthropologist whose association with Malta goes back to the mid-1950s, devoted almost his entire erudite presentation on the apocalyptic state of Malta's deteriorating natural and architectural environment. A serious indictment indeed but it is the unpalatable truth.

While most of the Marina Grande, the waterfront leading to the Fort, has been tastefully restored exposing the magnificent edifices belonging to different eras, one cannot fail to remark about the irreverence shown to Fort St Angelo in recent years with the building of concrete structures on the flanks of Dockyard Creek and Kalkara Creek at the end of the elegant waterfront just before you reach the wet ditch from the Vittoriosa side. The block of flats facing Kalkara at one point completely obliterates a section of the line of fortifications leading to St Angelo. To compound this "uglification" it is rumoured that if an intended project for a health farm on the foreshore facing the Grand Harbour entrance is approved, the aesthetic beauty of the Fort would be lost.

What is worrying is the insensitivity or the emotional weariness of a section of Maltese society who considers these lamentations as frivolous or politically motivated. Perhaps we have tip-toed into the new millennium still nurtured on the colonial belief that the world owes us a living fully deserving global support for our transgressions.