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Michael Ellul: Valletta, Porta Reale and Environs, National Archives Malta. 2013, 122 pp.

Michael Ellul’s Valletta, Porta Reale and Environs is an excellent, timely publication that focuses not only on the controversial gash in the Valletta enceinte but also on its environs, which include the former opera house and Palazzo Buttigieg-Francica, or the former Ferreria of the Order.

Drawing on official documents and contemporary newspapers, it serves to put the whole issue into its proper perspective, supplying a necessary background that is often lacking in many who speak their minds.

De Valette’s decision to build the new ‘most humble’ city of Valletta was a political state-ment to transmit the Order’s resurgence and decision to be permanently settled on the island sanctified by the blood of so many of its brethren.

By the time Francesco Laparelli definitely left the island, the mural fortifications had been hurriedly raised in expectation of yet another Ottoman assault.

The original entrance was just a basic cutting in the rock-face, although a 1568 relatione hints at it having some adornment.

The stone bridge itself, which has now been restored to its original width, was built during the magistracy of Verdalle, by which time ornamental coats of arms and a bell-cot had been added.

A more elaborate second gate with three passageways including a wider central one, designed by Tommaso Dingli, was built in 1632.

This gate lasted till 1853, when the decision to build a wider entrance met with strong resistance in the Council of Government because of what was considered an excessive cost.

The gate was designed by Francis Thompson of the Royal Engineers and consisted of an uncommon arrangement of two entrances for vehicles and two for pedestrians.

Ellul describes this set-up as a clever combination of “the spirit of the fortified walls of the city with a deliberate attempt to recall the aspects of the Dingli Gate”.

The gate was officially opened to the public on August 6, 1853, the last gate to be met with general acclaim.

The next two gates would be born in hot controversy.

But before we are brought to that point, Ellul describes the wide-ranging competition launched in the 1920s to refashion the general area which included the building of a hotel and a new court of justice as near as possible to Porta Reale.

That, too, had set off a hornet’s nest, not least by local architects when they learned that the Valletta Lay-Out competition was being opened even to foreign practitioners.

The bombing of the Royal Opera House was eventually to make some sort of intervention on the area a pressing necessity in the post-war years.

It was in the early fifties that a competition for the rebuilding of the opera house was won by Zavelani-Rossi but, although it was endorsed by parliament, it came to nothing.

Ironically, the only project that came to fruition was the replacement of Thompson’s gate by the controversial one designed by Alziro Bergonzo. This met almost general opprobrium, not least by professionals who considered it “completely out of character of the Baroque City of Valletta, shorn of all architectural features, (and) completely alien to the notion of an entrance to a walled city”.

The book would have gained much by the inclusion of a number of maps

And yet, the government stuck stubbornly to its plan and for 50 years Malta’s capital city was entered through a gate more in fitting with fascist aesthetics. The only other major intervention was the building of a monstrous block of flats which could have graced any soulless new town and which duly reminded us that no local political party can lay claim to a monopoly when it comes to bad taste.

The latest intervention, that by Renzo Piano, whose brief covered the entire area of the gate and the opera house, is, oddly enough, discussed in fewer than three pages in spite of it being the most controversial of all.

Actually, Piano had first proposed one project which was met with gasps of admiration by the ‘experts’ but was then forgotten for some time.

He eventually was asked to come back with a slightly changed project.

This project took in a few of the objections that had been raised, and the same ‘experts’ again gasped in admiration, which makes one think that the original ideas were not so perfect.

The question arises: would a third attempt have been even more ‘perfect’?

Now, Piano’s sheer architectural genius does not need to be reiterated. But the main bone of contention is the removal of the gate and the disruption of the line of fortifications.

This move had already been done in two fell swoops and soundly condemned, at the Duke of York Avenue and near the fishmarket.

Ironically, the rebuilding of the arch at Vittoriosa to restore the line of the bastions (following the gash insensitively done there) had been hailed as an excellent example of restoration by some of the same experts.

Gates – potentially the weakest part of a city’s fortifications and therefore the part which more than anywhere else needed to be strengthened – have come to represent the cities themselves.

When Żabbar and Żebbuġ were raised to the status of a city, faux gates were erected at their limits.

And, when Porte des Bombes had to be modified because of the increase in traffic, the ‘barbaric’ British left it there to mark the outermost limits of Malta’s capital city.

Alberto Laferla, back in the 1920s, had boldly suggested the demolition of the gate.

However, Laferla had been criticised by the Italian architect Umberto Di Segni, who stressed that it should be kept.

Di Segni believed that its value lay in “much more than its artistic significance and its architectural and sculptural merits”, but also in “its historical and national significance”.

And so, the gate will have to undergo yet another change of name after Porta San Giorgio, Porta Reale, Kingsgate, and Bieb il-Belt.

How it will be known, whether as Gonzi’s Folly or Piano’s Gash, is anybody’s guess.

The other contentious proposals are the building of the new parliament and and the open-air theatre.

The new parliament building would have been outstanding in any other context.

And the open-air theatre could have worked out in a less decibel-adoring nation.

The book would have gained much by the inclusion of a number of maps showing the sites of subsequent inter-ventions and rebuilding.

This would have been of help, especially to those who are not overly familiar with the area and the considerable transformations it has been subjected to.

Perhaps, as conclusion, one can let the author himself comment: “The city of Valletta cries for an entrance gate that does credit and deference to an architectural gem with venerated ages of history, and a World Heritage Site.”

And so say all of us. Or most of us anyway.