In Mons. Alfredo Mifsud Street, Ta’Xbiex there stands a structure which, to my knowledge, is the only surviving public air-raid shelter entrance in Malta.

Dating to around 1941, this was the typical protective construction found over street-level public shelter accesses.

It is fabricated in soft-stone masonry walls and a reinforced concrete roof pitched in parallel to the stairs underground.

The structure was sometimes referred to as a “shelter hood”. They were sometimes painted in black and white stripes to facilitate visibility during black-outs. After the war practically all of these hoods were demolished.

It is thus important that this structure at Ta’ Xbiex is listed and preserved for posterity.