Pedestrians using Republic Street in Valletta over the past weeks thought they were witnessing a miracle as the war-bombed Royal Opera House site was turned into something akin to a building site.

But to their dismay they found out that the long-cherished wish for the opera house to be rebuilt was not to be, and that the site was actually being used as storage space for building material used in the paving of pedestrian areas.

The site is currently an unroofed, open warehouse for paving stones, gravel, sand, cement and heavy machinery to be used in the paving of the new pedestrian zone in Valletta, covering Merchants Street, St John’s Street and St Lucy Street.

The materials are stored conveniently in the Royal Opera House ruins, a site which must be the costliest piece of real estate in the country.

The reconstruction of the Royal Opera House has always eluded those longing for it, though pressure for that must have started not long after the bombing on 7 April 1942 which demolished it. Since then, the Germans who knocked it down have rebuilt Nuremberg and the Japanese have rebuilt Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but the Maltese opera house languishes on, and still serves as a car park and a conveniently dark place for those unable to resist the call of nature.

It is now a temporary building materials depository but has at times been used as an open air theatre too. Suggestions for the site’s use have abounded too, and the idea for it to serve as a new home for parliament, a new shopping centre or an arts centre are among them.

Whatever is done with it, it is certainly at present not enhancing Valletta’s looks as a UNESCO World Heritage site.