Heritage Malta has registered as objector to the proposed development at Giardino Zamittello in Pietà.

The heritage organisation has also requested the upgrading of Villa Frère's scheduling.

It was referring to the proposed construction of a four-storey hotel with a towering 10-floor structure in lieu of the garden and neighbouring property.

As the official holder of the title of neighbouring historic Villa Frère, the national agency for cultural heritage is arguing that the proposal would ultimately mean the destruction of the magnificent and important historic garden known as Giardino Zamittello and would also inevitably lead to the crippling of the villa.

Surviving Grades I and II listed extents of Villa Frère (in yellow) and the Zamittello garden excluding the dwellings (in red).

The garden and villa are also being compromised by a six-storey touristic development replacing a two-storey house in a stepped alleyway off the Pietà marina, close to the villa, a seven-storey apartment block on the seafront approved last year and a 10-storey retirement home still under consideration.

The agency also requested the upgrading of the scheduling of Villa Frère as a Grade 1 heritage monument and the scheduling of Giardino Zamittello, together with an adequate buffer zone to protect its context.

Read: Historic villa entrusted to NGO

Giardino Zamittello is a highly formal garden consisting of a series of walled enclosures originating in the mid-late 18th century, with further embellishment during the very early 1800s in the high baroque, neo-classical idiom.

Views of Giardino Zamittello featuring the garden walls supporting balustraded walkways, neo-classical niche and central hemi-cyclical staircase and pergola.

It includes a tower that was most probably used by the Maltese insurgents during the French blockade.

Documentary evidence shows that the house and its garden belonged to renowned auditor Giuseppe Nicolo Zamitt, known as Zamittello, who also owned Palazzo Zamittello on Strada Reale, Valletta, just across from the Royal Opera House, as well as the iconic Castello Zamittello in Mġarr.

Read: Beyond the walls of Villa Frère

Zamittello was an acclaimed Maltese legislator and man of letters, having a career that spanned the end of the Order of St John’s rule, the Napoleonic occupation, to the start of the British colonial government of Malta.

Views of Giardino Zamittello featuring the Tuscan tempietto.

He was among the first recipients of knighthood when the Order of St Michael and St George was instituted.

Reportedly, he is the only Maltese to be interred in the chapel of the Langue of Auvergne in St John’s Co-Cathedral, after his demise on September 7, 1823.

Pietà is best known for its patrician houses and gardens with the likes of Villa Guardamangia, Casa Guardamangia, Villa Medina and Villa Zammit.

Views of Giardino Zamittello featuring two of the walled gardens and a pergolated cruciform section with an exquisitely carved central fountain, proposed for demolition.

Villa Frere and Giardino Zamittello are special in that they offer a symbiosis in how they embrace the raking topography of the ancient Qrejten (Pietà).

Apart from its intrinsic historic significance, Villa Frère is also important for the history of the Maltese language since Mikiel Anton Vassalli spent a long time in the property discussing with Frère how to establish Maltese as a written and taught language.

Outline of the property proposed to be mostly demolished and rebuilt as a 10-storey hotel.