I find it difficult to imagine how someone as distinguished as Cynthia de Giorgio and the members of the St John’s Foundation should have chosen the centennial year of the Great Siege to propose to cover much of the Great Siege Cemetery abutting on Merchant Street and build on much of the site a massive structure to house the famous tapestries and a series of functional offices: turnstiles, ticketing booths and, unbelievably, a gift shop.

What this will mean is the concealment of much of the great church’s Merchants Street elevation. This is incredible. The foundation has been so successful with the huge income the church has been deriving from tourists that it is imitating commercial organisations by trying to rake in more, no matter the aesthetic cost to one of Malta’s greatest monuments.

I, for one, will never forgive it if the project goes ahead and, if this happens, Mepa will have added yet another one to its list of shocking decisions.