Frans Said, writing on Garibaldi’s stay in Malta in 1864 (The Sunday Times of Malta, May 3), suggests that “a study should be carried out to ascertain his lodgings while in Malta” and adds: “Perhaps the building had suffered damage during the last war, but a marble plaque could still be erected to commemorate such an important personality.”

Said’s assumption is correct. The hotel where Garibaldi stayed was the Imperial in St Lucia Street, Valletta.

It was renamed St James Hotel by my maternal grandfather, Raphael Gabarretta, after he relinquished the St James Hotel in St Paul Street in 1917 (until recently occupied by the Jesuit community).

The St James – formerly Imperial – Hotel was totally destroyed when it was hit by a German parachute mine in March 1941. My late mother had told me that it had contained a plaque marking Garibaldi’s stay. The St James was later rebuilt as the Embassy/ Ambassador cinema in the 1950s, and is now the Embassy complex which, ironically, is now being partly converted back into a hotel.

A vivid description of the air raid which destroyed the St James Hotel is found in James Holland’s Fortress Malta: An Island under Siege 1940-1943, published by Orion Books in 2003.