Gozitans woke up on Friday to find that a statue of Ninu Cremona, close to the Three Hills fountain in Victoria, had done a disappearing act together with its base.

But a Gozo Ministry spokesman confirmed to the Times of Malta that the statue, which had been there since the 1980s, had been removed to be cleaned and placed in a safe place until work on the Gozo Museum under way next door is completed. 

The monument to the Gozitan linguist, who was born in 1880 and died in 1972, is the work of Gozitan artist Alfred Camilleri Cauchi, and had been erected on the initiative of Gozo Lyceum teachers and students.

The monument had been inaugurated by the then Education Minister Agatha Barbara in May 1973. The figure of Ninu Cremona had been cast in bronze at the San Carlo foundry in Marsa.

People who frequent the area on a daily basis told the Times of Malta that although plans to remove the bronze statue had been announced, there was no indication that the entire base would also be removed. 

The work on the Gozo Museum in Triq Fortunato Mizzi is a Gozo Ministry project financed by European funds. The site in question is the former Ninu Cremona Boys’ Lyceum Complex.

No indication that the entire base would also be removed

The development of the Gozo Museum includes the restoration of the abandoned existing school, the demolition and reconstruction of the library wing and the creation of a public urban space.

The new museum will bring under one roof a number of disciplines, namely archaeology, art, ethnography, folklore and natural history, which are currently dispersed into separate museums within the Ċittadella. The statue, once restored, will be incorporated in the new building.