The Couvre Porte counterguard in Vittoriosa is to be restored to its former glory and will once again become an imposing structure.

The project, unveiled by Resources Minister George Pullicino yesterday, is expected to be completed in 18 months’ time.

The small bastion will be surrounded by a lawn and new paving, and the parking area adjacent to what once was Vittoriosa’s main gate will be moved away from the bastions.

This latest project is part of a €36 million investment in the country’s historical bastions, of which €9 million is being spent on Vittoriosa alone.

One of the main aims of the project, financed by the European Regional Development Fund, is to recover the “proper legibility” of the fortifications and restore them.

Part of St John’s Bastion, for instance, had been demolished to allow vehicles through, and recently the government built an arch to allow people to walk along the bastion walls.

The elliptical arch, designed with traditional methods in mind, looks bright and new compared with the rest of the weatherworn bastion.

In keeping with international conventions, building blocks in the bastions which are beyond repair are being replaced by new blocks without any attempt to make them look as if they were part of the original structure, as this would be construed as falsification.

The current bastion was built in the 1720s by French military engineer Charles Francois de Mondion over existing walls built around the time of the 1565 Great Siege. As works on the arch were going on, the original wall could be identified because of the different methods of construction used.

Though these layers, now hidden behind the newly built arch, cannot be seen, a similar cross section will be left bare in another part of the bastions as an archaeological record, Superintendent of Fortifications Stephen Spiteri said.

Mr Pullicino also said that work was underway to turn the ditch surrounding Vittoriosa, which is in a state of neglect, into a garden.

Other works in the area included the demolition of the oil bunker built in the 1950s, which has now opened up the view of the bastion it was obstructing.