Msida Bastion Historic Garden will be open tomorrow, Sunday, April 7 from 9.30am to noon, and Din l-Art Ħelwa volunteers will be available to guide visitors, who can also buy plants and bargains from the bric-a-brac and used books sections. Tea and coffee will be served against a small charge.
The garden served as Malta’s main Protestant cemetery in Malta from 1806 to 1856. At least 528 people were buried there, mainly British servicemen, officials and businessmen and their families, some of whose descendants still live in Malta today, as well as some Maltese, including Mikiel Anton Vassalli, known as the father of the Maltese language.
The cemetery contains many marble headstones and funerary monuments as well as indigenous and exotic trees, some of which are 200 years old. It subsequently suffered from neglect, erosion by the weather, and vandalism, and was also bombed during World War II.
It was restored by Din l-Art Ħelwa in collaboration with government ministries and the British High Commission over a 10-year period between the 1980s and 1990s, and was awarded the Silver Medal by Europa Nostra in 2002. In 2004, a small Museum of Maltese Burial Practices was opened adjacent to the garden.
The garden is located in Vincenzo Dimech Street, Floriana (further on from the Grand Hotel Excelsior and the central public library). It is open to visitors on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays as well as on the first Sundays of the month, from 9.30am to noon.
Admission is free but donations towards the garden’s maintenance are appreciated. For further information https://dinlarthelwa.org.