Plea to reconsider Piano's plans for Valletta

I listened attentively to what Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi had to say on TVM on Tuesday on the whole City Gate project. His views are important since he is the ultimate decision maker and the person responsible for any mistakes in this project.

City Gate: The gap being introduced by Renzo Piano in this gateway is firstly Egyptianising or Babylonian in style, certainly not in keeping with a 16th century fortified city such as Valletta. Modern style Piano has, in my view, made a grave mistake here in style and aesthetics, destroying the whole concept and reason for the city's fortifications, which should only be pierced by a smallish round-arched gateway beyond the bridge.

Secondly, he is doing away with St Pius V Street above City Gate, which is one of the main thoroughfares leading into Valletta. To where is pedestrian and vehicular traffic going to be diverted, once this strategic street is lost, making parking impossibly difficult for residents of, and visitors to, the city? The City Gate must be handled with extreme care, not haphazardly as it is now.

New Parliament Building: Firstly, this is out of place at the city's entrance; and parking for MPs will be hazardous, probably outside Valletta. Secondly, its planned architecture on stilts does not make sense in a 16th century city like Valletta. Aesthetics must be respected and there used to be an Aesthetics Board in my architect father's days to oversee all proposed planning.

Buildings had to be mutually harmonious, not discordant. And if they jarred, a permit was not issued.

Placing a stilt-based new parliament building next to solid St James' Cavalier jars and certainly does not respect Valletta's original plan by able military engineer Francesco Laparelli. Please, let's not play about any further with any modern styles within Valletta, of all places.

If Piano's plan goes ahead, as the Prime Minister intimated in Tuesday's interview, then Valletta's entrance is going to feature a hotch-potch of styles.

And the whole exercise will have to be corrected after the passage of a few decades.

What we are doing today, after all, is correcting the errors of style introduced by planners Zavelloni Rossi and Bergonzi in the late 1960s. No more errors, please. Once was enough.

The opera house: Incredibly, Dr Gonzi is going ahead with Mr Piano's outrageous plan for an open-roofed opera house and he feels good about it! In my opinion, this is a major mistake. And he shall, as we undoubtedly shall, live to regret it. It won't pass the test of time. Only a solid building and no open space, fits well on this site. It has always been a built site. And for Mr Piano to come up with something modern, novel, flimsy and open to the elements, as he is planning, is nothing less than a disaster. It is throwing history and our dearest city traditions to the dogs and will not go unforgiven.

It is to be taken with more than a pinch of salt when critics express their view that modern props and backstage wouldn't fit in a rebuilt theatre. So how did the impresarios and backstage crew manage with Barry's theatre before 1942? I have heard of no pre-war complaints on this matter. So why now? And, anyway, the Theatre Royal in Bath, England had its interior modernised in recent years to be better suited for modern performances. So why not our Theatre Royal in Valletta?

Rehashing the Mediterranean Conference Centre - apart from its cumbersome name - will not work, since the courtyard turned into a theatre under Lorry Sant lacks the necessarily harmonious architecture for a beautiful theatre.

Again, it is, and will be, a new hotchpotch, neither here nor there.

I am a strong traditionalist, and would love to see the pre-war Royal Opera House restored in full to its pre-war splendour near Valletta's entrance gateway.

I beg the Prime Minister, along with other artistes, not to dump this earnest entreaty but to have a fresh look at what would make Valletta beautiful and prestigious for us Maltese above all.

To reconsider Mr Piano's plans would be a step in the right direction. To carry on with them is to invite disappointment and just criticism.

Please restore the opera house. Its positive impact will be incalculable.