The way Enrico Gurioli, an Italian journalist, tells it, the first time he came to Malta he boarded a yacht at St Paul’s Bay which was full of young students, who danced their way while the boat ploughed the sea from St Paul’s Bay to Grand Harbour.

But when they entered Grand Harbour, with the music still beating, they all fell silent, awed by the scene that met their eyes.

This is the impact Grand Harbour has on those who enter by sea: its landfront is even better than its waterfront.

In two weeks’ time, between 26 and 27 October, around 200 Italians will be coming to Malta for an Areamedinit meeting on “The Industrial Archaeology of the Sea and the Environment”.

This is the seventh Areamedinit meeting: the previous ones were held in Italy and focused on places linked to the Italian Navy such as the Venice Arsenal, Livorno, Palinuro and the Amerigo Vespucci.

Areamedinit’s main role is to safeguard the memory of human effort from the first half of the 19th century to the first half of the next one. It thus celebrates the maritime industry at a time when this was being changed by technological advances.

The conference is being held in Malta because its participants want to hear about the government’s 20-point projects for Grand Harbour, which they intend to use later on to compare with the plans for the development of the port of Ravenna.

It will end with a Lectio Magistralis by Professor Peter Serracino Inglott on Abraham’s Mediterranean which he will deliver while participants are, fittingly, enjoying a harbour cruise.

It is useless, Sig. Gurioli feels, both to return ports and harbours back to nature and also to remove all traces of past eras when industrialisation was not equal to the one we have.