We have been told that the Valletta Rehabilitation Project has made a tremendous new find: a tunnel beneath St George's Square! This has been declared as if it were the find of the century. This tunnel was known to everyone. Its entrance has for many years been used as a store. The basic truth is that the project planned for the area has been embarked upon without the necessary research and documentation such a project deserves.
I have already written on the subject. I am not in favour of another big hole in the middle of Valletta but I have already expressed the view in The Times that if the government insists on implementing this project it must first carry out the necessary research and then plan so that the excavated space is used for more activity than just a one-level car park for members of Parliament, including the possibility of an extension to the St John's Co-Cathedral museum which is, after all, only a few metres away.
But it is typical of the manner in which projects are being handled in this World Heritage city, Even before any proper investigations were made, an application was filed with the planning authority on the basis of a few shallow exploratory holes that proved nothing. It was the Cultural Heritage Advisory Committee and the Integrated Heritage Management Unit of the planning authority that told the applicant, that is, the government, that first they had to conduct serious investigations. They were asked to look for shelters we know exist.
They were requested to look for the piping system that brought water to the central fountain, which was the symbol of the extension of the water system to Valletta by the Knights. They were told to look for the base of the pillar that existed at the end of the square. They were told to protect the small area of the original concrete parade ground in front of the Main Guard.
Furthermore, they were told to check whether any of the road paving still existed. (I can assure you that the original lava paving is still there beneath the tarmac.) They were told to present new plans to treat the area as a square and to leave the part of the road "readable" as a street so that lower Republic Street (already cut off from central Republic Street as if a wall existed in front of the Palace) would not be visibly cut off for ever by forming a square that goes right up to the Palace. That means that the Republic Street paving should continue in front of the Palace and on to the lower part.
What has been done about all this?
Two trial archaeological excavation pits were dug confirming what we already knew. Furthermore, after the application was filed, showing that a small door in Archbishop Street will be widened as an entrance to the car park, they finally went to this area and found the tunnel that has so ceremoniously been proclaimed!
How different were projects done in the past! In other areas of Valletta, which were paved, research and investigations were conducted before the design was made and underground systems were restored before the project was implemented. Suffice to remember what was done in Republic Square, Great Siege Square and St John Square or in Mdina, where extensive archaeological investigations were done before the paving project was started.
It is no wonder that citizens, witnessing what is going on, doubt whether this subterranean heritage will be protected when these projects are taken in hand.
Dr Bondin was curator of Valletta for 20 years