Fondazzjoni Wirt Artna yesterday joined the outcry against the heavy damage done to the parvis of Mdina Cathedral by workmen employed in the rehabilitation of nearby property.

The heritage body said it fully supported the stand taken by the Mdina Rehabilitation Project and the Mdina local council in criticising the destruction of a good part of the parvis.

“It is annoying to note that while a degree of consideration is normally given to protect historic buildings under such circumstances, the same is not accorded to historic pavements and other street features. In this way, ancient street surfaces are chased into by inconsiderate workmen laying or seeking buried utility services; others regularly disturb the evenness of pavements and stepped streets laid with hard stone blocks. This not to mention the complete destruction of what little remained of the originally cobbled parts of the streets in Valletta,” FWA said.

It recalled that some years ago, Dr Ray Bondin, Executive Coordinator of the Valletta Rehabilitation Project had conducted a much-needed pioneering exercise wherein all public surfaces in the city were examined to ascertain what form of historic flooring lay beneath the modern tarmac covering.

This information should have served as a basis for the formulation of a road/street master plan for both Valletta and Floriana, FWA said. In the absence of such a plan, the same information should be consulted each time that road works were needed.

“What lay beneath our historic streets and pavements should be exposed and restored, not destroyed, for open spaces within a historic or traditional context are also valuable. FWA appeals to Heritage Malta in particular to consider offering training courses in the laying of traditional street-paving materials since there is a total lack of such skills at present.”

Indeed, it added, tradesmen employed in such work were most likely to cause far more damage than any good, as had been repeatedly seen.

There was a whole series of damning examples – the cutting through the huge and marvellous hard stone blocks covering the Bibliotheca arcade paving for the laying of power cables, the poor patching up of the lava section of St Christopher with modern ill-fitting substitute material; and the unearthing and burying in concrete of hundreds of original granite cobble stones during the laying of new water services in the lower part of Republic Street in the early 1990s.