One World - Protecting the most significant buildings, monuments and features of the Maltese islands (46)

Villa Frere on Marina Street, Pietà is a three-storey seafront palace built in the late 18th century. It was the residence of Sir Hookham Frere during his stay in Malta at the beginning of the 19th century. The façade is characterised by a main doorway having a portico consisting of two Tuscan order columns which seem to have been added in the early 19th century as was the fashion. Above the main entrance is a wide open balcony. The façade is painted in a reddish-brown colour making it more prominent.

The pièce de résistance of Villa Frere is its extensive gardens laid out on terraces up the hill where St Luke's Hospital is located. Frere was fascinated by the antiquities and the Romantic Period and this influence can be seen from the features and garden follies still extant in the gardens, such as a belvedere, a Doric Tempietto, arches and other garden decorative features. In one of his letters, Frere describes how he built a retaining wall constructed in very large masonry polygonal blocks known as Cyclopean masonry and which still survives and are sometimes mistaken for archaeological remains. The gardens of Villa Frere actually the inspiration for Villa Bologna's gardens in Lija as designed by Lady Strickland.

Since the 1950s parts of the upper gardens of Villa Frere were encroached by the building of a small state school named after Frere, and by the helipad at St Luke's Hospital.

Mepa scheduled Villa Frere, ancillary structures, gardens and garden features as Grade 2 national monument and the garden follies (Tempietto, belvedere and arches) as Grade 1 national monuments as per Government Notice no. 629/08 in the Government Gazette dated July 21, 2008.