Sunday began with breakfast in the rooftop restaurant of the Castille hotel overlooking Grand Harbour. I was booked to join a Heritage Malta trail exploring Military and Naval aspects of 16th/17th Century Malta meeting outside Hotel Phoenicia in Floriana at 8.45. I estimated that the walk over from my hotel (quarter of the price of Hotel Phoenicia!) would take me 5 minutes but I didn't expect the St James' Cavalier walkway to be closed and so it took me longer and I was the last to arrive as they were loading up the bus. My heart sank as I saw the number of people who were piling onto the bus and I found I missed out on a window seat. I sat in silent agitation as we drove the length of the island to the Red Tower of Mellieha.
The Red Tower is so-called because it was painted red rather than leaving the yellow stone exposed as with most of the buildings in Malta. One theory is that the colour made it more visible in the mist that sometimes covers Malta but whatever the reason, when the tower was being restored Din L'Art Helwa, Malta's Heritage Trust, insisted on painting the tower red. The formal name for the tower is St Agatha's and it was built in 1647-8 during the reign of Grand Master Lascaris. I first came across St Agatha when I was in Sicily and staying in Catania. The story of her martyrdom is horrible and I have started to wonder about the knights' obsession with women who died awful deaths resisting the advances of men. St Agatha was from Sicily and spurned the advances of her Roman lover who then had her persecuted and put to death by having her breasts cut off with shears and then burnt at the stake. The dedication to her in the chapel of the tower translates: "To those who wage war, I the Martyr Agatha, with breasts removed stand here, a fearless tower faithful and a threat to my enemies well known throughout the world."
Not surprisingly, the 360 view from the tower is stunning. When I was taking photos across the straits to Gozo, a woman told me proudly that I was taking a photo of her parish church. The tower was part of a line of fortification that ran from Gozo through Comino and along the beaches on the North-eastern side of the island (the South-western cliffs were considered impregnable). The towers protected against invasion from the sea at that particular point but were also a chain of communication to alert the island to threat. Messages were sent by flags during the daytime and fire at night.
The hike up to the tower restored my positive view on life and the return journey on the bus to Vittoriosa was more enjoyable. We stopped briefly to look at a small section of the Cotonnera fortifications. This massive project was planned to completely surround the three cities (see my earlier post) but was such a huge undertaking that it was left unfinished after ten years when the funds ran out and new grand masters came into power with further grandiose ideas that required funding.
The chapel here was dedicated to St Catherine of Italy, another woman martyred, this time by having her head cut off. The porch of the chapel is identical to the chapel in Valletta where I have been going to the lunchtime chamber music concerts and the design is attributed to the same architect who was involved in the 1713-14 reconstruction of that chapel, Romano Carapecchia. The painting by Mathew Preti that has been restored and will be remounted behind the altar in the Valletta chapel shows St Catherine kneeling and bound but looking ecstatically skyward as the executioner puts his hand on the hilt of his sword and looks questioningly at the viewer for the signal to proceed. It is this questioning glance that turns the painting into a startling work of art for me.
But our visit to the Cotonnera lines was brief and we all piled back on the bus to go the short distance down to the Maritime museum that I had visited on the previous day. Coffee had been prepared for us in a large room across the hall from the museum and was ladled out to us from a large pot. It was only afterwards, when we had gone into the museum and were listening to an excellent presentation from a young man who was very knowledgeable about life at sea at that time, that I discovered that the coffee was actually made in the style of coffee at sea in 17C with cinnamon sticks and cloves added.
Where the knights built the fortifications as their shield, the navy was their sword. They did not need to use a press gang in Malta as recruitment to serve in the navy was entirely voluntary with the promise of good food, good pay, a pension and good training at the University of Malta set up for the purpose of preparing seamen. Many of the models exhibited in the museum were used in the university for training purposes.
Another interesting exhibit shows artefacts gleaned from excavation of a small area of the seabed that gives a sense of what sailors were eating, drinking and doing with their spare time 300 years ago. Apart from seeds, stones and bones that demonstrate the good diet, there was also a collection of pipe bowls made in Malta, North Africa and Sicily that were used for smoking tobacco and cannabis, and several dice made of bone. Gambling was illegal in the navy but the evidence demonstrates that it was popular and the sea was a ready unit for disposal of the evidence.
The painting of the Madonna of the Fleet by Antonella Ricci done in 1575 is reputed to be an ex voto from the Battle of Lepanto. Sometimes knights would pray to a saint in the heat of battle and promise a work of art if they survive. This particular offering shows the Knights fleet with angels backing their ships, opposing the Ottoman vessels with devils at their backs! But Saint Barbara was the martyr most favoured by the knights' navy. Like St Agatha and St Catherine, St Barbara also died horribly, but the man who cut off her head got his come-uppance by being struck by lightening so sailors pray to St Barbara during storms at sea.
The young man who gave such an excellent presentation at the Maritime museum will be giving a lecture there on friday this week so I will go and learn some more about the fascinating maritime history of Malta.
We were dropped back at Valletta at the end of the tour and I decided I needed some reflection time so went and ate my biscuits and cheese for lunch at Argotti gardens - the university's botanic gardens - another public park on the top of ramparts in Floriana. I wanted to stay in Valletta until 5.00pm when there was a performance of Maltese composers at Teatru Manoel. It started raining in the afternoon and it was a new experience for me wandering through almost deserted, rain-washed streets to the theatre. The compere for the show was also the main composer featured by the Crossbreed ensemble, Ruben Zahra. One of his pieces featured the Maltese bagpipe made from local bamboo attached to a cows horn with the mouthpiece inserted into the neck of a goatskin with tasseled legs. The piece also included a friction drum that is played by rubbing the bamboo inserted into the drum rather than by striking the skin. The concert, held in Sala Isouard of the beautiful old theatre, was challenging but certainly held my attention.
I finished a very full-on day with lampuki and vegetables in one of the seafood restaurants along the front at my hometown of Marsaxlokk!
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