Earlier this year, when I read that Castille Square was next in line for a whopping €1.6 million redesign, I didn’t do the dance of joy. Instead, my heart sank.
I remember driving to the square a few days later to get one last look and commit the place to memory, before the trees were axed and the square I rather liked ‘as was’ disappeared for good. I was too late.
Before I go on, I think I should first of all declare a prejudice. I have something of an aversion to the word ‘embellishment’ in the context of Malta and its topography. It all boils down to taste and trust. I simply don’t trust the taste or motives of the powers-that-be and never have.
The other thing is that ‘embellishment’ is not the same as ‘restoration’. While the former envisages add-ons and seeks to improve, true ‘restoration’ tactfully repairs and conserves.
Embellishment is hardly new to Malta or the Maltese landscape.
As far back as 2009, the restoration/embellishment fudge was already on the government’s agenda for Castille. It was argued that traffic emissions (so do something about those!) and the ravages of time had left their mark on the stonework and caused the crumbling of much masonry and sculpture.
The ‘new’ 2013 façade is cleaner, starker and whiter. Was this perhaps embellishment by stealth after all?
I have, you see, reservations about making a 1740s building look new by scraping off so many years of patina, which to my mind acted as a protective layer against sun, wind, rain and those very same emissions.
It’s like removing the protective crust from a wound, making it more susceptible to infection. In their zeal to ‘botox’ and clean up, was the building’s natural ‘tissue’ and immunity meddled with? It’s irreversible. Stone, unlike skin tissue, doesn’t regenerate or grow back.
I was repeatedly assured that the restoration job was expertly carried out. Still, I was never able to shake the feeling that the building had been weakened and damaged in the process.
Fast-forward to 2015 – Castille is once again in the limelight. Never has an expression been more apt. Let’s start with the square. If the pictures and projections published in March 2015 are to be believed, I will be extremely disappointed. I found the orderly sterile design wholly inappropriate.
From the piddly water fountain – which would even be derisory and inadequate were we discussing the Buġibba waterfront – to the ultra-modern diagonal criss-crosses and light fittings, which are better suited to an airport runway, the whole thing is soulless and naff and certainly should not be made to coexist with what is arguably one of the finest buildings in Malta.
I didn’t write about it in March… well, because I didn’t. Mind you, there have been many more ‘so-called’ urban regeneration projects in the past, where I didn’t register my disapproval or objection, despite having numerous reservations.
I suppose there are just so many heritage and conservation blows you can take before the resolve is beaten out of you and you’re numb all over.
I have something of an aversion to the word ‘embellishment’ in the context of Malta… I simply don’t trust the taste or motives of the powers-that-be
Palace Square in Valletta was one such project. I especially resented the fact that the trees there were removed and that the city lost an important ‘lung’. While trees in other European countries seem to thrive and coexist quite peacefully with neighbouring properties, and while every effort is made to ensure trees in urban areas are properly safeguarded, here in Malta where trees are already in the shortest supply, they’re not.
The common denominator of every one of these blasted ‘embellishment’ projects is the blasting and removal of urban trees under the guise of ‘damage to property’. Protected age-old trees are then uprooted mercilessly and replaced with ridiculous potted plants or trees-in-a-tub.
This has done no one – except landscaping contractors – any favours. We’re suddenly overflowing with flowery roundabouts, which don’t offer us any joy at all.
Trees don’t just offer protection from the arid heat. They’re the most beautiful and natural sort of embellishment. A tree will make the most cracked and littered pavement and the most potholed street look beautiful, without any need for flowers or street furniture.
Remove the trees, however, and Malta looks desert-like, naked and unsightly.
Trees also absorb carbon dioxide and potentially harmful gasses, such as sulphur dioxide and carbon monoxide. They also release oxygen. A win-win for polluted Malta.
Yet some of Malta’s most beautiful tree-lined avenues, in areas like Żebbuġ, Fgura and Cospicua, have had the axe. I hear too that the trees of Tokk Square in Victoria are next, barring some last-minute miracle. One hopes Mepa’s appeal board will see the light.
Speaking of light, I am reminded of Castille and the garish lighting system, which was another excruciatingly unnecessary, tasteless – to say nothing of a hugely expensive – exercise.
To make matters worse, it appears that Castille has now been irreversibly damaged in the process. Holes, said to be the size of tennis balls, have apparently been drilled through the stonework.
I’m afraid I regard this lighting blunder as ‘embellishment’ of a very questionable kind. Castille, like any other great work of art, is a finished and carefully designed artefact.
It doesn’t need the ‘lift’ of embellishment. Would you consider embellishing Caravaggio’s Beheading of St John with fancy lighting reminiscent of a bathroom rail, or drill holes for electric cables in its frame?
Such things enrage me beyond words. Considering that so much of Malta’s infrastructure – roads and pavements – could use a couple of million and still be wanting, I find investment in inappropriate lighting nothing short of sickening.
Other things on Malta may be doing well, but that is no occasion for the artistic arrogance implicit in embellishment.
Our beloved Castille is not Las Vegas. It follows that the ‘Disneyfication’ of our heritage, and calling it sound restoration, must cease forthwith.
michelaspiteri@gmail.com