Your newspaper did well in giving full-page coverage (1 January 2017) to the unveiling of a monument to Francesco Laparelli and Gerolamo Cassar in Valletta. The whole merit goes to the generosity and patriotism of the board of trustees of the Alfred Mizzi Foundation.
In my volume Valletta Città Nuova - a map history (1566-1600) published in 2003, I had written that it was disgraceful that no monument to commemorate Cassar and Laparelli had ever been erected. This notwithstanding the fact that Malta had self-government in 1921 and again in 1947, and independence in 1964.
When the world-renowned David Woodward visited Malta shortly after writing the book's foreword, he asked me to take him to see and photograph the monuments of Laparelli and Cassar. I was ashamed to tell him that they simply did not exist.
On 17 January, 2016, on the last anniversary of the foundation of Valletta, I had a letter published in The Sunday Times of Malta complaining about this grave omission. I was informed by the Alfred Mizzi Foundation on 31st January 2016 that a monument to these two distinguished personalities was in the making. The Foundation deserves our eternal gratitude for this gift to the nation.
Dr Albert Ganado
Valletta