Early in May the Prime Minister announced the government’s determination to regenerate the President’s Palace, and appointed Judge Giovanni Bonello as Superintendent of the project. President George Abela, in a personal message, immediately assured Dr Bonello of his full support. The restoration of The Palace presents quite a number of issues and rather unique problems. Noel Grima speaks to GIOVANNI BONELLO on the issues and the problems involved

Some of the problems of The Palace stem from the fact that the building complex was never intended to be the palace of a ruler.

The original town plan had designated the site where the Auberge de Castile now stands for that purpose. What is today The Palace started as three, possibly more, separate buildings, which included the original Auberge d’Italie and Eustachio di Monte’s private residence. His uncle, Grand Master Pietro di Monte, took up temporary residence with his nephew while the intended palace got off the ground. He liked the place and never moved out.

In fact he started adding to Eustachio’s footprint the neighbouring houses and eventually pushed the Italians out of their Auberge and incorporated it in the growing perimeter of the hotchpotch palace building.

It was only Grand Master Pinto who, in 1741, tried to give some unity to the architectural and structural mess resulting from the gradual expansion. (See box)

Though cosmetically the three or more properties now look more unified, The Palace still suffers from the problems inherent in its disorganised and unplotted growth. This incoherent background has to be kept in mind when considering any overall restructuring.

This will be the very first time, after Grand Master Pinto’s great 1741 intervention, that The Palace’s weaknesses will be radically treated.

The project will necessarily have to follow some inevitable time-lines to bring to fruition my brief that only the Presidential suite and the state rooms on the first floor are to remain, while all the other areas are to be vacated and converted into a national showcase.

This implies the relocation of the other present occupiers. On the ground floor, among others, are the Attorney General’s offices, the Public Services Commission, the Law Revision Committee and the Community Chest Fund.

On the first floor, Parliament and its Committees, the Speaker’s Chambers, the offices of the ministers and parliamentary staff.

The migration will follow roughly in two stages. The ground floor (except for the Armoury) will be vacated right away. The piano nobile can only be regenerated once the new parliament house becomes functional and all the present spaces are freed.

Everyone will appreciate that finding suitable accommodation for all these entities and moving them out cannot happen overnight.

In the interval, all the preparatory work is in place. This consists of three principal tasks. Firstly, a proper survey of the architectural fabric to identify structural insufficiencies, together with what is ‘original’ and what are subsequent accretions or modifications.

Particularly during the British period and thereafter, the ground floor suffered heavy interventions: partitions, split-levels, soffits, alcoves, opening and blocking of apertures. All this is being identified and decisions will be taken on a case-by-case basis as to what to retain and what to reintegrate.

One of the problems with The Palace is that it was never “conserved” organically. All the interventions in the British period more or less appear like crisis management solutions.

A royal visit? Strip the Grand Masters’ chapel and turn it into a short-term bedroom, which had long term, and disastrous, repercussions.

Inaugurate the new chivalric Order of St Michael and St George? Vandalize the austere Council Chamber and turn it into an operetta setting for the new Order.

The Governor missed a private garden? Wall in Piazza Regina, plant orange trees all over it, make it out-of-bounds for the citizenry and reserve it for the delectation of the Governor and his guests.

Want a fine statute for the main courtyard? Demolish Wignacourt’s historic and scenographic fountain at the Marina and cannibalise the bronze.

The officers clamour for a court to play racquets? Take over the upper courtyard and pound the flowerbeds into the ground.

Prefer parquet to marble? Rip up the huge floor sundial with the brass zodiac signs that crossed the Throne Room, and replace it with pretty and shiny wooden strips.

And you are told baroque painting has gone out of fashion? Organise hasty sales by auction to disperse the collections of the Grand Masters for peanuts.

Nevertheless, there is absolutely no conspiracy afoot to obliterate the memory of the British period – in fact, my intention is to enhance all that was positive about it.

I do not have in mind the warren mentality that debased the ground floor, but the substantial accretions and embellishments by the more enlightened British Governors, like the imposing royal cipher over the main courtyard, the stately staircase to the old Armoury, the marble flooring, together with the 19th century frescos in some corridors.

I am not one who believes that the historical clock is to be put back and that whitewashing past memories helps.

There will be some difficult decisions to be made – but the principle will always be one of minimum interference.

The first floor is in an encouraging situation – it was never left to metastasise the way the ground floor was and, apart from the Speaker’s and the parliamentary offices, dealing with it is not a high priority.

Once the Perez d’Aleccio frieze is consolidated and the Paladini chapel is thoroughly reintegrated, possibly with the negotiated return of the original Paladini altarpiece now (legally) at the Archbishop’s Curia, the piano nobile requires only intense maintenance and conservation.

The second survey in hand is the “services” survey – to establish the state of the electricity, water, drains, ventilation, telephones, air-conditioning, lifts, electronic cabling, to mention the main ones.

So far every entity within The Palace decided on its own; each had its ‘private’ power systems, computer and telephone networks – a veritable jungle. The plan is to unify and rationalize as far as possible this intractable chaos. Another necessary task well in progress.

The third preliminary step forward that can be worked out on paper, before the actual migration in concluded, refers to the planning as to what use the very substantial newly vacated space is to be put.

To some extent, some of these decisions seem mandatory: the Armoury will revert to its original and natural habitat, once Parliament moves out of the old Armoury – maybe with some expansion of space as today several antique bronze guns once in the open air have been housed in the ground floor armoury buildings (originally the Grand Masters’ stables).

But, for the larger extent of the newly available space, some serious thinking is required and strategic choices made: a number of state-of-the-art ‘boutique museums’, like, costumes, majolica, the monetarium, carriages, the Sciortino collection, a new printing museum, Maltese silver and so on? Or one large homogeneous collection? Or a mixture of both?

These are fundamental decisions that need thinking through. Whatever the final outcome, one value I am not prepared to compromise on – and that is quality.

The display must be as ravishing as the objects displayed. I have been spoilt by participating (modestly) in the great Fondazzjoni Patrimonju Malti exhibitions and will not settle for less. The Palace deserves that, and the nation even more.

Still quite unfocused are the plans for the basement, the roof and the turretta. These too have huge potential, and form part of the holistic scheme, but the project will still remain ambitious enough if we prioritise the two main floors.

Three houses, eight developments

The front elevation of The Palace suffered from the fact that the edifice originally consisted of separate buildings – the one-storey Auberge d’Italie at one end and the Eustachio di Monte house, with its higher two-storey frontage at the other.

Over the centuries many efforts were made to combine these ill-matched elements into a more coherent whole. From documentary sources and visual representations that survive in contemporary drawings and paintings, it is possible to trace at least eight developments in the facade

To my knowledge, no graphic evidence seems to be available to register the earliest stages of the palace frontage. The first known painting shows the former Auberge d’Italie, originally built on only one floor, already with the second floor built later (in two stages). But it is possible to reconstruct the various phases with some accuracy.

The very first would have shown the one-storey Auberge d’Italie with its main entrance portal on Republic Street, and the two-storey Eustachio di Monte home.

Curious is the fact that the earliest surviving representations of what had been the old Auberge d’Italie show no doorway at all on Republic Street. Of course it is in theory possible that the entrance to the Italian Auberge was in Archbishop Street – but I believe that to be highly unlikely, as all Auberges had, by formal regulation, to face an open square.

The only other feasible alternative is that the awkward and asymmetrical blank portion of wall under the second of the top floor windows once housed the entrance, and that this (now superfluous) doorway was walled up when the di Monte residence was merged and intercommunicated from inside with the Italian Auberge.

Then, Grand Master La Cassiere started adding to the front elevation. He built one of the principal attractions of The Palace – the Supreme Council Chamber with the sloping roof that still survives, on part of the air space overlying the old Auberge d’Italie. And having called from Rome Matteo Perez di Aleccio, a well-distinguished artist, he willed the magnificent historical frieze showing the Siege of Malta.

When the Supreme Council Chamber was built, the skyline on Republic Street showed three different levels: firstly, on the Archbishop Street corner, part of the ground-floor roof of the one-storey Italian Auberge, followed by the new high first-floor roof of the Chamber, next to the lower first-floor roof of the di Monte house.

The next Grand Master, Hugh Loubenx de Verdalle (1582-1595) added the ‘summer apartment’ on what was left unbuilt of the roof of the Italian Auberge – the part still unoccupied after La Cassiere constructed the Supreme Council Chamber.

This summer apartment ran all the way from the corner of Republic Street, along Archbishop Street, stopping short of the Armoury hall (which eventually took up the whole of the Merchants Street back of The Palace.

By now, the two buildings appear as plain, unpretentious structures in the Girolamo Cassar idiom. On the left, the one-time Auberge d’Italie, with the overlying summer apartment and Supreme Council Chamber; on the right, as an independent entity, physically divided by a strongly rusticated quoin, the di Monte residence.

Only two small, unobtrusive balconies, with an iron or wooden rail, existed at that time, one for each building.

The fourth elevation, which derives from two drawings found by Dr Albert Ganado in the Bibliotheque Nationale of Paris, roughly sketched by an anonymous Dutch artist (I would guess William Schellinks, who visited Malta in 1664) show a more elaborate façade.

On the first floor, windows have acquired a small uncovered balcony, with the open-air balconies at the extremities now wrapping round the corners. The skyline still shows the difference in heights between the two adjacent buildings, and the void wall-space of the ‘disappeared doorway’ of the old Italian Auberge goes on staring noticeably.

The portal of the di Monte residence, as shown in the Paris drawings, looks quite similar to the side entrance still intact in the Archbishop Street elevation.

The fifth façade shows more radical transformations. The skyline has now been straightened out by raising the height of the di Monte residence, and has been unified by a strong masonry cornice that runs over the whole elevation.

A new ambitious doorway projecting upwards to more than half the height of the first floor, replaces the old and modest rusticated entrance. A window, on the axis of the previous ones, has been opened up in the blank space once occupied by the walled-up Italian entrance.

A better sense of cohesion now disciplines the unruly façade. This stage in the development is documented by a large painting in a private collection, from the times of Grand Master Marc’Antonio Zondadari (1720-1722) whose pennant flutters in the foreground.

This major facelift must have been made just before 1700, as the visitor John Dryden, the renowned poet’s son who visited Malta during that year, describes the Grand Master’s Palace as “new”.

A fresh development is observed in a later painting. The open balcony at the di Monte end of the building has now been replaced by a closed wooden one which seems to run continuously all the length of the last three windows and to wrap round the corner of Old Theatre Street.

Contrary to popular belief that closed wooden balconies in Malta are a relic of the Arab domination, their appearance in Malta is very late. Not a single instance of the now ubiquitous glazed wooden box is recorded before the turn of the 17th-18th century.

The Valletta Museum painting of The Palace, acquired in 1930 from the estate of Sir Adriano Dingli, documents a further development in the pre-Pinto elevation.

An imposing covered wooden balcony now also envelops the Archbishop Street corner of The Palace. This painting poses a major puzzle, as the records show that a second balcony was built, (but, more likely, merely embellished), at much the same time as the second portal (in 1741-42).

In fact, the development and sequence of the covered wooden balconies wrapping round the corners of the façade of The Palace, present some difficulties.

On the di Monte corner, the corbels in Republic Street display the arms of Grand Master Martin de Redin (1657-1660), which clearly indicates that they were erected in his times. The corbels on the Old Theatre Street elevation have the Cottoner coat of arms, which points to one of the brothers, either Grand Master Raphael Cottoner (1660-1663) or Grand Master Nicholas Cottoner (1663-1680) as the one who constructed them.

On the Archbishop Street balcony, the arms are exclusively Cottoner’s. Grand Master Pinto too, had work done on the balconies.

In February 1741 Manoel Pinto de Fonseca (1741-1773) ordered the commencement of the grandiose reconstruction work of The Palace, which gave it the façade virtually as we know it today.

The work terminated in October the following year. These consisted in the opening of the second entrance in Republic Street, the embellishing of the two doorways with massive rusticated arches on which two large balconies with wrought iron railings rested, the improvements in the new closed wooden balcony at the Archbishop Street corner, the construction of an imposing stone balustrade over the roof cornice and the removal of all the remaining projecting open balconies from the windows of the piano nobile.

Finally, The Palace acquired the more harmonious, unified look we are now familiar with.

Nothing much changed during the British period, except that stone benches running along the façade were first built and then removed, as the presence of beggars and loungers on them disturbed the Governors.

Sometime in the 19th century the flat parts of the elevations were painted a bright burgundy colour, traces of which are still visible in corners.

(Taken from Dr G. Bonello’s Histories of Malta Vol III.

by kind permission)