I would like to start by congratulating the people and council of Vittoriosa for their continued work and dedication that has transformed their city into a beautiful and welcoming place and is, in many ways, an example of what sustained effort can achieve.

There are however, in my modest opinion, a couple of issues I would like to take up with the forces that be.

Firstly, the business of the Clock Tower in the Town Square. The Clock Tower as it stood can never be “restored”. Any future structure would be a fake and as such of scant value. Looking at the square as it is today, it presents a pleasant piazza, well proportioned and in harmony with the surroundings. The passage leading to it from the stairs to the left of St Lawrence Church is particularly quaint in my opinion and the little square at the side entrance to the church, flanked as it is by two other chapels, is particularly thought evoking. As one enters the piazza from this lower level square, the sudden opening up of the space is exhilarating. I believe this would be negatively affected if instead one were to be faced by an imitation ‘tower’ that even in its pre-war state was rather big in relation to the piazza and unusually placed.

The regular re-enactments and medieval nights that Vittoriosa holds, especially in the summer months, attract hordes of visitors, both local and foreign and the excellent Marina has naturally added significantly to the number of people frequenting the square. Indeed, a regular ferry service to Valletta plus improved lift access to the upper city would include Vittoriosa and its neighbouring cities as targets for cruise liner tourists visiting our Grand Harbour. The presence of a new clock tower in Vittoriosa Square would encroach on the available space and adversely affect these activities restricting the view from certain angles of the piazza.

The Clock Tower, whether we like it or not, is gone, and I think we should concentrate our limited resources more towards conserving what we have left, (and God knows we have enough on our plate doing that with the current state of the fortifications surrounding our cities!) then embarking on projects aimed at recreating bygone structures that at best afford dubious enhancements.

Secondly, and this matter would need a courageous show of political goodwill, that would help restore my faith in our parties and hopes for our future, concerns the so called ‘Freedom Monument’.

I was lucky to have been brought up in Senglea, a stone’s throw away from the present day Vittoriosa waterfront separated only by a narrow water channel. I well remember the view from our balcony that stood right opposite St Lawrence Church. The harmony of the row of sea-front buildings, the Clock Tower and the baroque churches and steeples of the town in some small way reminded me of Venice.

Please, does anyone else, apart from me, see that there is something grossly incongruous about the Freedom Monument and its setting? I love nature and the countryside as much as the next man, but what for heaven’s sake is a pile of rocks, a rubble wall and cactus doing in front of the Collegiate church of the Order of St John? The so-called symbolic nature of the hideous structure is lost on me. Did we need to ‘build’ a hill of rubble, and did it have to be in front of the beautiful Baroque church that was the first church of the Order and in itself an architectural marvel.

I value our hard-earned freedom and independence like the rest of us but allow me to be the little boy who dares shout “the Emperor has no clothes on!” Please, anybody who thinks that the monument as it stands is an eyesore, raise his or her finger. Imagine the site without it there – the façade of church with its double staircase with an unobstructed view from the sea and across the channel.

Let us please reach a compromise and translocate the monument to a nearby but not so inappropriate place. There is a real hill just outside Vittoriosa Gate with a nice empty roundabout just waiting to be used. The Bronze section of the monument can be easily erected there and maybe refashioned more tastefully, perhaps omitting the cactus (that by-the-way originates from Mexico and are not native to the Med, at all) and the rocks and rubble.

“To know what is right and not to do it is the worst kind of cowardice” (Confucius)

Maurice Falzon

ZEBBUG