Have you any contribution to make to the discussion of the draft development brief for the rehabilitation of Fort St Elmo and its environs as invited to do so by the Malta Environment and Planning Authority?

The main recommendation that the fort should be essentially devoted to cultural purposes, with catering and tourist commercial outlets, including some hotel-type accommodation only in a supporting function, is surely the right one.

The issue that has been left unclear is what the cultural purpose is to be, although it is hinted that some kind of museum is favoured.

In one place it is said that the expansion of the current war museum is “to be investigated” and that existing historical structures along the enceinte could be used for this or other cultural purposes.

My own opinion is that it should not only be Lower St Elmo that should be devoted to celebration of the site’s glorious past as a fort, but that the identifying character of the whole complex should be built on the war and peace theme.

To begin with, the War Museum should not be exclusively devoted to the Second World War but be expanded to cover all the wars in which Malta has been historically involved.

However, the suggestion I would most like to put forward is that there should also be set up in the Upper St Elmo building a Centre for Peace Studies, in order to have a contemporary, future-looking vision crowning the memory of the blood-stained past.

In the brief there is a proposal for “educational and office development” on the site of the building across the road from the fort that is at present being used as an examination hall.

There are references to “offices” in several other places, which seems to contradict the general principle of not increasing office space in Valletta, a principle that is approvingly quoted in the brief as also applicable to St Elmo.

Assuming these “offices” are just those required for the management of the cultural and supporting entities, I think it would be advantageous from the point of view of the liveliness of the area if it were also a locus for student presence and activity.

Perhaps the Centre for Peace Studies could moreover be accompanied by existing institutes dealing with international affairs and possibly diplomacy. Such a location would undoubtedly prove to be extremely attractive to foreign students and scholars. Intellectual battling would be an exciting substitute successor for the Christian-Muslim physical warfare of 1565.

It would admirably complement the Valletta campus of the University, at present being excellently refurbished at the Merchants-St Paul Street block that had come to be known as the Old University and where performance studies are now flourishing around the MITP black-box multi-functional hall.

What about access and parking facilities?

The brief contains a very tentative suggestion about an underground car-park beneath the present Evans building on the assumption that it will be converted into a hotel which would be complementary to the Mediterranean Conference Centre.

Geomorphological ignorance seems to be the main motive for the tentativeness of the suggestion.

In itself such a car-park would be helping to tackle what has emerged as possibly the factor that is at present the greatest obstacle to the revival of our capital.

The loss of the parking spaces both at St George’s Square and to make room for the Renzo Piano project has already sadly dealt a hard blow to the restaurants and other business outlets in town.

It is imperative that some well-proportioned underground parking areas be included in the master plan for Valletta since its complete pedestrianisation, however devoutly wished for by some, is still not acceptable to the vast majority of the Maltese.

The brief envisages a traffic-free zone in front of the fort and canvasses the idea of an underground level motorway underneath the existing road alongside the granaries outside the fort.

This sort of tunnel passage sounds as if it were a good way to provide access to vehicles and an enjoyable space for the unmotorised at the same time.

A prime objective of the rehabilitation not only of Fort St Elmo but also of its environs is giving uplifts an area of Valletta that has become degraded from every point of view.

This socio-cultural, democratising aspect was a major preoccupation for us when St Elmo came up for discussion at the Council for Culture and the Arts a few years ago. We were obviously interested in this primarily Heritage site because of the need to establish for it the most suitable contemporary use that is also the best means of conservation.

A constant concern of the chief executive of the council, Davinia Galea, fresh from her Postgraduate studies in Arts Management, was to find ways in which the community in the neighbourhood could come to feel the locals were sharing in the ownership of the national project.

She made several suggestions through which the rehabilitation of the fort could provide the necessary stimulus for a radical

raising of the quality of life in the area. Without this, it is scarcely thinkable that it could become a high quality tourist attraction.

What other uses have been proposed?

There is actually no space for the large capacity (1,500) multi-purpose indoor theatre that was a popular suggestion, unless it is excavated in some such place as under the present War Museum.

In any case, my own preference is not for a bazaar-like congeries of disparate offerings, but on a varied playing on a single theme.

Thus the Piazza d’Armi should be the scene not only of re-enactments but also of military tattoo events, like the ones Edinburgh Castle is famous for during the city’s festival.

Fr Peter Serracino Inglott was talking to Miriam Vincenti.

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