It was with great dismay and apprehension that I read Giovanni Bonello’s article ‘Let’s hide the Majestic bastions’ (The Sunday Times) in which he attempted to rewrite his own interpretation of history by rubbishing not only the gardens the Order built on the fortifications and trees and gardens they allowed to be planted within the city, but also all that the British did during their tenure of the island.

Sadly, the greater part of his often inaccurate rant of his list of hates targeted the planting of trees on, below and around the Valletta during the course of its 400 year history.

His extreme bias has allowed him to make some inaccurate statements. Bonello’s statement, “You can only see patches of bastions” shows that he has never walked or driven around the bastions, travelled by sea into the harbours, stood on the shores of Sliema, Manoel Island, Senglea, Vittoriosa, Ricassoli, and even as far as Mdina. Had he done so he would have realised that the fortifications are not only visible in their totality but look as majestic and awesome today as they did 400 years ago.

His pet argument that these fortifications are monuments to war and destruction is even more of an anachronism today than it would have been in 1661 when the Italian Langue created a garden out of the fortifications as the threat of war receded into a period of peace. A state of mind reflected at Sa Maison and Argotti.

Earlier on, the architect Francesco Laparelli, the genius behind these fortifications whom Bonello so admires, recommended that trees be planted within the city.

He further errs when stating that Dubrovnik and Lucca are unadorned with trees.

Dubrovnik, Lucca, Nordlingen Rothenburg, Coburg, Schloss Neuschwanstein, and many others throughout Europe, not to mention Rhodes, have parts, if not all, of their fortifications and inner city adorned with trees.

Contradicting himself he states that de Valette gave strict orders that no trees were to be planted and that such planting would be “an injury quite close to high treason” and then goes on to recount that a merchant was allowed to plant Mulberry trees in the city, neglecting to mention the gardens that the Knights had planted in their palaces and from one source, I read, an orange grove in what is today Piazza Regina.

He ridicules that in the early 19th century the fortifications “started being prettified with tasteful greenery and wee flowers. Many spaces available turned into military cemeteries and eventually into gardens.”

As mentioned above this process was started some 200 years before by the same Order that created these same defences. Bonello refuses to look at the historical context of Valletta’s social, cultural, economical and political evolution, which took it from a time of war to many centuries of peace irrevocably changing it from a place of belligerence to one of commerce and culture, into the City “built by gentleman for gentlemen”.