Around and under Valletta

I've been nursing a cold this week as Malta begins to warm towards Spring.  But I didn't want to miss two new perspectives on Valletta.  On Wednesday afternoon, Malta Geographic organised a walk around the Valletta bastions starting from Floriana.  Then on Thursday evening Din l-Art Helwa were hosting a lecture by Architect Edward Said on Subterranean Valletta.

The photo is of hewn rock on the Grand Harbour side of Valletta.  In the bottom right hand corner you can see an arch entrance and I think this might be the entrance to one of the tunnels that Edward Said talked about.

On Wednesday we set off from Floriana and walked down the side of the Hotel Phoenicia.  I was surprised to see how quickly we were looking out over Marsamxetto harbour towards Sliema.  A huge hotel has been built here but it is below the sight line from the ramparts.  At the bottom, we walked past an old bar with a Cisk sign and picked our way along a curious cutting with a terrace of boat sheds.  Beyond this area we came onto the globigerina limestone rock ledge at the base of the bastions.  We followed the base of the bastion round using steps cut into the rocks in places until we reached the headland where the breakwater for Grand Harbour points a finger to Fort Ricosoli.

The breakwater is separated from the headland by a channel that is deep enough to allow ferry boats through.  There used to be a bridge over here to access the breakwater but it was destroyed in a U-boat attack during WW2.  Now there is only the rusting remains of the central support and steps up to the old bridge access.  There is talk in the papers of EU funds to build another bridge to the breakwater and make it a peace bridge.

Soon after the breakwater we climbed up and over a new footbridge at the base of the ramparts and continued to follow the base of the ramparts on the Grand Harbour side.  Here there is a lot of rock hewn areas that seem to be slipways from the time of the knights.  There are also old capstans and quays, probably from the British period.  A large wooden door at the base of the ramparts has a sign announcing "Boom Defence" and our guide explained that this was where the boom gates across the entrance to Grand Harbour were operated from during WW2.

As we came round at the base of the rampart that now houses the Malta Experience we came to the fisherman's village that I have noted with interest before when I walked along the top of the bastion past the old knights hospital now the Mediterranean Conference centre.  Here there is a small group of boat sheds built into the ledges of rock and each one complete with a neat front yard.  Small boats winter on the narrow streets and there is a legion of cats sleeping the afternoon away.  At the far end along a mini headland covered with sheds, a mural of four different kinds of ship has been painted on the hewn rock.

After the village, we climbed back up to the top of the bastion and walked past the giant bell at the war memorial and down the rampart to Victoria Gate.  I have walked this way before coming up from the dhaijsa drop-off at the old fish market.  We walked past the wharf where the Sicily ferry comes in and I remembered my landing there in September last year.  It seems so long ago!

From here we walked back up the hill to Floriana and strolled through the park at the top of the bastions there, looking over the cruise line terminal to Cottonera.  I have walked along here before when I first explored the walk around Grand Harbour to Marsa and then the three cities.

We completed the circuit by cutting across Floriana to go back down the Msida bastion and past the Librerija Pubblika Centrali where I noticed they have a separate Melitensia section that I have made a note to visit again soon.  We came out at a car park outside the massive hotel Excelsior that we noticed at the start of the walk.  The group broke up here but another rambler showed me a route up through a cutting to the bus terminus.

On Thursday night, the lecture on subterranean Valletta was fascinating.  I went up for the lunchtime concert at St Cat's and then spent the afternoon attending to some of the necessary steps for coming to live in Valletta in 2010.  I arrived at Din l-Art Helwa office at about 5.30 and already there were people gathering in the small lecture hall.  When they started the lecture scheduled for 6.00 the room was full and people were standing in the corridor hoping to hear what was said.

Before the coming of the knights in C16 there were probably cisterns and perhaps catacombs to serve the farming villages and temples on Mt Sceberras.  The knights continued the traditional Maltese practice of digging out large wells under a house to service the water requirements for the dwelling but also to provide stone for the building.  But they also added a road network of sewage tunnels under the grid system of the city streets.  This was at a time when the major cities of Europe were sinking under the streams of sewage running in the streets.  The British added pipe connections to this grid of tunnels to make an efficient sewage disposal system and re-direct the sewage outflow to a treatment plant rather than pouring out into Grand Harbour.

The network of underground tunnels, cellars, cisterns, reservoirs, granaries and access tunnels was further added to in WW2 to provide air raid shelters for the residents of Valletta.  These later additions are characterised by a zig-zag entrance to prevent bomb blast from penetrating.  The system is so extensive that it has not yet been fully explored and researched and even this week, new tunnels have been discovered.  Every way I look at it, Malta keeps on revealing hidden depths!