We had a do in Mdina recently. We arrived when an outdoor Mass was still in progress, which was just as well because we could just stand at the back, not pay much heed to what the priest was saying and instead take in the scene unfolding in front of us. The sun was setting on the whole span of landscape from Mdina down to Valletta; it’s a view I’ve known all my life, but never cease to be in awe of.

It was one of those soulful moments when the mind quietens down and you have nothing to do but focus on the horizon with its palette of colours, and slowly the secrets of the land start coming to life: the dots that are cars are replaced by horse gallopers, by raiders of the distant past, by people from the nearby villages running for the safety of the fortified city. You see, country landscapes are human landscapes; they are our link with our ancestors.

Not anymore. In a blink, thanks to a much objected-to planning authority decision, that view will now be gone. We shall stand on the Mdina bastions, trying to scan Valletta but instead our eyes shall rest on four fat ‘modern’ towers, skewing the very centre of this view.

The visual impact will be horrendous – photographer Daniel Cilia showed the audience gathered exactly how ghastly it will all look, but that did not fluster the Design Advisory Committee which concluded that the impacts were “not significant enough to warrant concerns”. And the majority voted in favour of four high-rise towers, the future homes, apparently, to a business and economical hub in the middle of Mrieħel.

Which means that now when you walk up the steps to the Mdina belvedere and you peek through the view finder, you will see Mr Gasan in his office charting his economic successes, with an original painting of what once was the view of Mdina on his wall. What’s in a view when you can have a ‘worthy milestone’ for the country’s development?

I am not even going to bother about the other major side effects of this project – traffic, parking, pollution – what I am finding painful to come to terms with is the murder of The View. The view which is yours and mine. It belonged to our fathers and by right it belongs to our children. And with the flourish of a hammer on Thursday, we gave it away.

We need to shape policies based on beauty and enact laws to safeguard the things and places that people love

I find it so sad that in all this rush to ‘progress’ we are forgetting a real human need: beauty.

Does anyone talk about beauty anymore? We talk about ‘sustainable development’ or ‘generation of economic return’ or ‘prosperity’, ‘power’, ‘turnover’, ‘price tags’, ‘income’, ‘expenditure’, ‘GDP’ and ‘production’. But we don’t talk about respect and honour and beauty. Money is all that matters; increasingly we are erasing from our minds the knowledge that money doesn’t buy you everything.

It was not always so. In previous centuries, beauty was a word and a concept people used frequently and confidently. In Florence, in Scotland, in Rome, in Austria – even in Malta. We, the Maltese people, we know beauty.

Our medieval stonemasons constructed amazing churches and cathedrals, they carved a city out of stone. Ours is the land of Caravaggio, Calì and Preti. Throughout history, artists and architects in Malta have sought aesthetic perfection.

But somewhere along the line, the idea of beauty became blurred. And today we are left with the ugliness of Funland in Paceville, Seabank in Mellieħa, Kempinsky in San Lawrence, A3 Towers in Paola. Appalling sights which we applaud as progress.

This is not to say that I am against buildings. As Italian journalist Italo Calvino once wrote, there is a beauty in structures that speak of culture, of trade and labour, layers of life etched in streets.

But there are buildings and there are wondrous pieces of architecture. I stand inside St John’s Catherdral, or in front of Piano’s Parliament and my soul wants to weep with joy. I stand in front of Tumas Tower in Portomaso and I feel utterly sick. The difference is that beauty has that extra ingredient: it is not just stone or concrete, there is a touch of spiritual in the mix. In the past we understood that the human spirit is not satisfied by material progress alone, but we seem to be increasingly forgetting that now.

We are in dire need of a Moviment. Not a political one. What we need is a movement of people who love beauty and are willing to stand up and defend it. The 19th century Scottish environmentalist John Muir had the perfect slogan for the fight for beauty: “It’s not blind opposition to progress, but opposition to blind progress”.

We need to shape policies based on beauty and enact laws to safeguard the things and places that people love. For the public good, we need to focus not only on our basic human needs but also on our spiritual, physical and cultural well-being. The landscapes, the countryside, the green spaces and the cultural heritage are as important as the country’s GDP.

Beauty is a human need. It is what keeps us sane. “Everybody needs beauty as well as bread,” Muir used to say. And he could not have been more accurate.

Is there hope at all?

Right now I simply feel helpless for a view lost – a view that the children of my daughter will never get to see.

krischetcuti@gmail.com
Twitter: @KrisChetcuti