The occasion which brought about the present volume was the commemoration, in 2012, of the 125th anniversary of the renaming of Gozo’s Rabat to Victoria.

Maybe, as the book amply shows, this was just a blip in the long and colourful history of the city. Seen in the light of today’s consciousness, this resonates of a colonialism today definitely beyond the national consciousness.

In 1887, the British Empire celebrated the 50th anniversary of Queen Victoria’s accession to the throne. Malta got by with erecting a statue in the Queen’s honour, but the Gozitans went one better. In May 1887, Mgr Pietro Pace, the bishop of Gozo, and Sir Adrian Dingli, the Chief Justice and President of the Court of Appeal together with 66 other signatures from the leading citizens of the island, wrote to Governor Sir John Lintorn-Simmons asking the Queen to consent to renaming Rabat to Victoria.

That today looks like a case of colonialism gone mad, but Rabat, to give it its real name, has such a long and varied history it can take anything in its stride.

The Victoria local council used this anniversary to come up with this wonderful table-top book, created by three persons all born in Rabat, and who complement each other wonderfully.

The words are by Mgr Joseph Bezzina. Describing Rabat’s past is a very delicate matter because of the parochial controversies that many time have created controversies, specifically which parish came first, the Matrice or San Gorg?

I do not claim to be an expert in this matter, but Mgr Bezzina, in my opinion, approaches the subject cautiously and dispassionately. The crux regards what happened in the early Middle Ages.

There was always a Cittadella on top of the hill – it made a wonderful defensive position. There is evidence of human presence on the hill in the late Temple Period (3150-2500 BC). The Romans turned the ancient Carthaginian citadel into an acropolis dominated by a temple dedicated to Juno on the site of the cathedral.

A curious parallelism intrudes: the Cittadella was called Mdina and Rabat was its suburb, just like in Malta. Fascinatingly, the author speculates that Gozo could have had its own bishopric as early as in Byzantine times. That fits in with other information we now have: according to Gilibertus Abate, about 100 years after the Norman invasion, there were 366 families in Gozo: of which 203 were Christians, 155 Muslims and eight Jews. In the whole of Malta there were just 47 Christian families. In other words, 81% of the Christians in the Maltese islands lived in Gozo.

And then the author speculates the cathedral, from its orientation and also with its bell tower occupying the space of a minaret, could have been modelled on a mosque.

The church in the Cittadella was called, from the earliest mention we can find, as the Matrice, which the author interprets as a cathedral church.

The main church in the Cittadella is dedicated to the Assumption, or Santa Marija, a very Greek devotion. Up till the late 15th century it was a church with one altar, in the Greek tradition, and this altar was separated by an iconostasis (as the small church in Comino) or screen.

Later on, always in the Greek tradition, other churches were erected: in the Cittadella the chapel of Christos Pantocrator, next to the guard tower, the chapel of the Prodromos or St John the Baptist and the chapel of Hagios Nikolaus. And down in Rabat, the suburb of the Cittadella where dwellings started to be built when the menace of Turkish invasion lessened, the old church of Hagios Georgios, St George.

As fear lessened (although there was always the persistent fear of raids, proved true in 1551) the population began living outside the Cittadella and soon three parishes were created for those “fuori le mura” – St James, recorded in 1449, St George in 1450 and Santa Marija ta’ Savina recorded in 1479. Each, especially St George’s, is at the centre of a warren of twisted alleys and close habitations. St George’s may have faced in a different direction than the one it faces today.

All this came to an end in July 1551 when Gozo was invaded by over 145 vessels under Sinan Pasha and the Cittadella was attacked. The inhabitants, who had fled to the Cittadella believing it would save them, quickly realised they were doomed. According to Stanley Fiorini some 500 escaped by sliding down ropes on the north side and hiding in caves. No help from Malta was forthcoming and the besieged Gozitans pleaded for a truce through a friar who was let down to parley with Sinan and ask for safety for 200 of the principal citizens. Sinan promised to let 40 free but the next day, when the doors of the Cittadella were opened, with the same friar acting as guarantor, the Turks forgot their promises and took 5,000 into slavery.

Grand Master d’Homedes toyed with the idea of abandoning Gozo but then the 500 who had escaped and those who had enough money to be ransomed started the difficult process of regeneration. Slowly, very slowly, life returned to normal. Fortunately, Gozo was left unattacked in the 1565 Great Siege.

By 1565, part of the walls of the Castello had been rebuilt, but as a medieval fortress. The Matrice, ransacked in 1551, had been repaired and restored. St George’s was still in ruins till 1592 but by 1598 it had been rebuilt (on a different axis). Later on a fundamental rebuilding of the fortifications was begun under Vittorio Cassar. Further plans for even stronger fortifications were not implemented.

By 1667, the population of Gozo was made up of 4,168 persons: 358 lived in the Castello, 1,200 in Rabat and 237 on the outskirts.

The book, I feel, steered clear of controversies and is masterful in providing historical details. The fact the book was published, without any controversy, by the Victoria local council shows the credibility of the author of the words, Mgr Joe Bezzina.

There are, to be true, some overlaps between the various chapters and the book blithely skips the intervening centuries until the short time in 1798 when, following the capitulation of the French, Rabat became the capital city of Gozo on behalf of the King of Naples and even had its own ambassadors, all for 22 months.

Then we get lists of British public works concluded by those vestiges of British presence such as football and the Boy Scouts. The rest of the book, just short of half of it, consists of various descriptions of the urban fabric of Rabat, obviously the churches, and then the traditions of the city from the beginning of the year to its end. The book concludes with a potted history of the local council up to and including the current one.

That is the way the book goes about its task. Others may prefer different avenues. But what in my opinion gives the book its outstanding character are the glorious photos by Daniel Cilia which give the book, page after page, amazing photos. You may be familiar with Rabat’s scenes but the angles, the shots, the colour of Daniel’s photos come as a pleasant surprise.

Obviously, he is at his best in describing the glory of the Rabat churches but equally at capturing scenes from the panoply of events in the Rabat year.

Some slight proof-reading mistakes mar what would have been a perfect book.