Those of you who are familiar with Franco Zeffirelli’s film Jesus of Nazareth know what scene I have in mind.

Jesus approaches the Temple of Jerusalem. Outside its walls, stalls have been set up to turn it into a marketplace. People are selling and buying, money is exchanging hands, the noise is deafening. It looks more like an open-air market than the entrance to God’s Temple.

Jesus cannot accept that a place of worship is being used for commercial purposes so He grabs a long wooden stick and starts hitting the stalls to knock them down. Coins scatter all over the place, and people try to pick up as many of them as possible.

“You have turned God’s place into a den of thieves”, is more or less what Jesus says in the ensuing moments. It is the only time in the film that Jesus is angry. Zeffirelli must have thought it fit to include the scene in his memorable film because, even in the Bible, it is said that this was the only occasion that Jesus let himself go.

This is the vision that comes to mind each time I go to Valletta, and walk up from the Tritons Fountain into the city.

Many times I wish I had that long wooden stick too, because I cannot stand the way the entrance to our capital city looks. As long as I can remember, long before the work started to rebuild City Gate, the entrance was not fit for a city which is said to have been built by gentlemen for gentlemen. Now, with all the makeshift boards, narrow passageway and construction work going on, the situation is as bad as it could get.

Valletta is not the Holy Temple of Jerusalem depicted in Franco Zeffirelli’s film. But what is allowed to take place there gives it a shabby, disorganised and uncultured look that reminds me of that scene – and not only because of the construction work, which I know is temporary.

I wonder how, with what is taking place, we can talk of Valletta as being the European Cultural Capital in a few years’ time. Do we really think it should be so?

It can be argued that the work currently taking place is not helping make things look better, and that everything will be sorted out, once the project is completed. But the thing is that City Gate had this disorderly look even before the work started; the project under way right now has only helped to make matters worse.

I hope that, when the construction work is completed – on the new entrance as well as the Parliament building – it will serve as a new starting point for the capital city, which deserves much better. I hope that it will be taken as a chance to give Valletta a new look and that what is now a haphazard collection of stalls is eliminated once and for all.

I just wonder what the thousands of tourists think when they approach the entrance to what should be the jewel in our crown, and find themselves in the middle of so much confusion. It hurts me as a Maltese citizen to see such an untidy and chaotic scene.

Were I to visit a city abroad and find an area similar to what one finds at the entrance to Valletta, I would not like it and I would not go there again.

I cannot understand how people can be allowed to put up mobile stalls selling almost everything imaginable throughout the day. Recently, added to the people who erect their stalls on a daily basis to sell food items, we had others erecting theirs to sell Carnival costumes, accessories and whatnot. There were even large vans parked with their back doors open to display the contents – items connected with Carnival – and the owners shouting to attract people to their wares. Did they have permission to do so?

It was next to impossible to walk into Valletta. Even third-world countries probably have a more organised system.

Once these obstacles are surmounted, one comes across several young people with their clipboards stopping pedestrians in a bid to have them take up a mobile phone offer – another common sight. Their main targets seem to be people of their own age, but even though I do not fall in this category I have been stopped several times and asked what kind of mobile phone service I prefer.

I ignore them.

In the past, we had timeshare sellers pestering tourists and chasing them down the street to try to sell them their services. They gave Malta a bad name and prompted many tourists to complain about them – some of them saying that they would never return. Fortunately, the timeshare pests are no longer around.

But today we have their replacements – we have mobile telephone provider representatives pestering local people to change from one provider to another. Can mobile phone service providers not find a better way of trying to attract new customers? As things stand now, these youngsters are practically blocking the entrance. There are too many of them, and some have their friends with them as well – forming small groups of people standing in the way of those wanting to get in or out of Valletta.

It’s ridiculous.

Then there’s another variety of pests who bother people for a different reason. These are the ones who are collecting funds for some cause or another. They are wearing homemade tags to give a better – more professional – impression, but I do wonder what their aim really is. They are the modern version of beggars.

A few days ago I was stopped twice by the same person asking me for money she was collecting for someone in need within a space of minutes. It is incredible how annoying these people are.

Over the past few days there has also been a group of musicians just inside the entrance. While their music may be suitable as a soft background noise, what they were playing was lost in the cacophony of sounds of a bustling city and actually only served to add to the racket.

This is not the entrance to Valletta that the city deserves and it is shameful that matters have been allowed to deteriorate so much.