Other possible uses for Fort St Elmo

The 3/11 Regiment Royal Malta Artillery Association (T) disagrees totally with what George Micallef, president of the Malta Hotels and Restaurants Association, is reported to have said about Fort St Elmo (February 19), namely that “transforming it into a tourism venue makes sense”.

Mr Micallef is obviously unaware of what other possibilities exist for utilising sensibly a historic military edifice of this nature. In our association’s submissions to the Parliamentary Secretary for Tourism, Mario de Marco, and the former Valletta Rehabilitation Committee, we had proposed the Edinburgh Castle current structures and utilisation as the model to be beneficially followed, above all, restoration, use and occupation of the fort as a military establishment (say, a base for the Armed Forces of Malta Band or other units), incorporating at the same time within the fort only structures of a well-organised military museum, simple, small souvenir and coffee shop and formal guided walk-around facilities. But certainly not residential tourism or similar full-scale facilities such as hotel, restaurants, bars, pools, etc.

Regrettably, simply because the authorities never deigned to formally call the association that represents the men of the last military unit to have lived and served in what historically was always a purely military establishment, yet another such establishment in our country seems destined to go the way of a commercially, speculatively inspired edifice.