Historic secret passage in Valletta

The recently announced rehabilitation of the sally port beneath St Michael’s Bastion is indeed welcome news. Not only will it improve much needed pedestrian transit in and out of Valletta but it will also bring to light one of the city’s oldest and most intriguing underground spaces.

This tunnel is in fact one of two such military devices known to exist on Valletta’s land front, the other located beneath what is today the government apartment block at City Gate. The mouth of this tunnel can still be seen in the ditch behind the south orillion of St John’s Bastion. There is strong evidence to suggest that these rock-hewn passages were designed by Girolamo Cassar soon after taking over Francesco Laparelli’s position as chief engineer during the construction of the capital.

At the outbreak of World War II, both sally ports were cleared and used as public air-raid shelters providing refuge to hundreds. The tunnel to be restored was then known as Houlton’s Garage while the other housed the Yellow Garage (after the war this moved to the disused railway tunnel on the other side of Porta Reale).

These images show a photograph of people entering the Houlton’s Garage shelter in South Street (courtesy of the Imperial War Museum) and a poignant painting by Edward Caruana Dingli dated 1941 (courtesy Marquis Nicholas De Piro) depicting shelter life in one of these two sally ports.