Imagine walking through Valletta two decades ago: a city tired and dilapidated, silence emanating from everywhere. Only a few restaurants open and fewer worth revisiting. A coffee shop or two open mostly for lawyers and businessmen and closed by the early evening. A city built by splendid knights reduced to the haunt of ghosts.
Fast forward to more recent years, when the magic started being woven and the city stumbled out of its slumber. The palaces were revived, the bastions suddenly seemed rebuilt, restored to their former glory. The city heaved and breathed; offices, cafés, hotels, restaurants and houses flourished.
Art and artists flocked back and bottles of prosecco and champagne cheered this resurgence. Valletta became a true capital city with a heart: a beating, brilliant heart. This heart of Valletta invited people from other towns and villages and other nations and continents to come and enjoy its deepest fabric. Valletta won a soul and is now quickly losing it.
It is far from lost yet – but unless something happens soon, the place that won back its beauty and pride, the city that once more walked tall, risks losing its lustre.
To revive the city, a plan was required along with serious work and numerous projects to turn it around. Now, while seemingly at its peak, the city needs a reality check. It requires an x-ray of what makes it tick. Can it continue ticking without dying or going back to its old, tired ways?
Valletta’s story reads like a fairy tale. Built by the knights, it is now a gem of a city perched on a hilltop. It was, in times of old, designed to be impregnable. Today the idea is that there are no oppressors, and everyone is welcome to visit.
The Renzo Piano project, even if you hate its design, has more resonances than just functionality and beauty. It is a city reborn – a city newly open to all.
The Piano project spearheaded the change sought and wrought by the authorities, who believed in a reborn city. And hurrah and cheers for the authorities, and a few good men and women, who not only believed but worked to raise Valletta back on to its pedestal.
Valletta is a city which is now not just beautiful but alive. It is resplendent and people flock there – to live, to visit and to enjoy gastronomic delights.
This is all good news for Malta and for its heritage, because heritage that is left unvisited and unused ends up abandoned, forgotten and derelict.
Valletta today is a success story that is growing in stature. People are flocking to buy properties and to live there or to turn every nook and cranny into a shop, a bar, a hotel, a café or an eatery. Real estate prices have soared, which rang in harmoniously to most men and women connected to Valletta.
But there is something worrying which needs looking into immediately. Success can be its own worst enemy and right now anything goes. Everything is left to chance and there is no proper planning or foresight.
Unless care is taken now, Valletta runs the risk of turning into – is already transforming into – another Paceville, whose raison d’être is unbridled entertainment. The mantra seems to be to attract as many visitors as possible. But numbers, even if guaranteeing temporary success, should never be the only goal in life.
There should be more attention to detail and to sustainability. More order, more well-designed street furniture, more emphasis on quality in everything that is done to attract people to the city, more cleaning, less noise, less clutter and more vision should be the way forward.
So far, there has been no debate about what Valletta needs and what its near or distant future should look like. Letting it grow and develop like a living organism is good and has been good up until now but, like everything in this world of ours, we need to look after all organisms especially if the development itself is turning into a problem. Waiting until the problem grows too large can be disastrous.
Valletta is one of the gems of the Mediterranean. But I dream of seeing a brake put on its progress – because while progress and development are good, when they are unbridled and unplanned they can ruin all the essence, all the fabric that makes the city unique.
Just as Valletta resurfaced after a long slumbering sleep, so it will go back to a worse coma and what shines now will be tarnished.
It is bad enough that the view from Valletta of Sliema is horrific. It will be our generation’s legacy if Sliema, its cubicles and cranes, look towards Valletta and feel twinned – not in design but in squalor and mayhem.