Opera house selling price put at €16,310

An "almost perfect" model of the old Royal Opera House in Valletta is up for sale after two years of painstaking work by a 70-year-old former building contractor.

The detailed two-metre by one-metre model was built by Carmelo Camilleri on plans from a book about the theatre. The ruins were the inspiration, he said.

The model is not quite the right height but has everything from the individual bricks and the material that binds them together to the wooden window frames made of matchsticks.

The scale of the model gives a very good idea of what the old theatre was actually like. Mr Camilleri is selling the model because he lives on his own and his son is not interested in it. The price is €16,310.

The limestone model is built around a wooden frame based on plans contained in a book Mr Camilleri had bought. He then measured the extent of the ruins in order to be able to build the exterior part of the model.

Having worked in the construction industry since he was a young man, Mr Camilleri recalled that as a boy he would build miniature houses out of stone but they were soon destroyed by his friends in a bit of rough play.

He stopped work on the model when his wife Ġuża passed away because at the time he just did not feel like working on anything but the desire to conclude what he had started got him going again.

The Royal Opera House is not the only model Mr Camilleri has built.

Other models include Westminster Cathedral, the Burj Al Arab Hotel in Dubai and Ta' Pinu church in Għasri.

Asked what he thought about Renzo Piano's architectural plans for the opera ruins, he said he had some reservations because of Valletta's baroque style architecture.