I’m determined to find all of the thirteen sculptures which are part of the Maltese proverbs series, which are dotted around the city. I found another two today, of which this is one.
The text reads:
“Do not count your chickens before they hatch – don’t make future plans based on wishful thinking”.
I purchased the Heritage Malta Multisite Pass earlier in the week, which gives free entrance to tens of museums and sites of historic interest across the islands. I’m intending to visit all of them during my time in Malta, so I’ll add links to each site after I’ve visited.
The pass cost €50 and I’ll have to add how much I’ve saved (or haven’t saved) at the end of these visits. The pass is quite simple, as it’s just a receipt which is stapled to a guide of the sites. It is apparently acceptable to take a photo of the receipt, but I suspect some of the sites I’ve visited might not have been thrilled to see that.
They’ve split the sites into the below regions:
HARBOUR AREA
VALLETTA AREA
National Museum of Archaeology
Palace State Rooms
Fort St. Elmo + National War Museum
RABAT / MDINA
National Museum of Natural History
SOUTH AREA
GOZO
Gran Castello Historic House
And, finally, there’s also free access to the Malta National Aquarium, which is neither run by Heritage Malta (unlike the other sites) and doesn’t seem to have much to do with history, but I’ll go anyway as I like aquariums…..
There has been a stronghold on the peninsula now occupied by Fort St. Angelo for so long that historians can’t pick out a particular date, but it is back in antiquity. There was a castle here by the thirteenth century, but it was the Knights of St. John who expanded it in the 1530s and made it their base on Malta. The site was used to defend the islands from Ottoman attack during the Great Siege, with one of the cannonballs fired at the site having been found recently.
Fort St. Angelo was further expanded in the 1690s and it wasn’t until the British took over in the early nineteenth century that it started to be redeveloped again. Damaged in the Second World War, the building was repaired and continued to be used by the British armed forces until they left Malta in the 1979. From 1906 it was also the home of the Royal Navy’s Mediterranean Fleet, although they irritated the locals by renaming it HMS Egmont in 1912. Fortunately the British saw the error of their ways and the original name was restored in 1933 when it was called HMS St. Angelo.
It’s only in the last two years that Fort St. Angelo has been turned into a museum, so, despite the rain, I felt that a visit to see the efforts of Heritage Malta would be in order. The site is also now the home of the Knights of St. John once again, something that feels like history falling back into place. In the above photo is the entrance into the museum, anyone getting into here would have already had to gain access through one gatehouse.
The site is large, but there are a lot of buildings which are empty and it’d be exciting if in the future there was more information about the history of the site. There are though three interpretation rooms in what were formerly dormitories used by the British, and the sally port which runs to them is accessible. However, the former recreation rooms and war shelter tunnel aren’t yet accessible, but perhaps might be in the future.
After getting a ticket, this is the entrance up into the main part of the fort. It’s hard to see how anyone could successfully attack this fort unless they heavily out-numbered the defenders.
This is D’Homedes Bastion which was built between 1536 and 1542, and the above photo shows just how wide the defensive wall was.
The rain meant that there were nearly no other visitors at the site, although the rain did make the floor just a little slippery as well. But it was immaculately clean and well kept, clearly some money has been spent on this restoration project.
There were a few of these watchtowers on the edges of the fort.
Inside these watchtowers there were extensive views over the local water.
There are several of these intriguing sets of steps, going where exactly I don’t know….
Part of the early defences.
Painted signs from when the building was used by the British military. There’s another old British sign in the shifting lobby.
This would have been an area where supplies were brought into the fort.
What is known as the Siege Bell, which was rung when the Great Siege was over. The present bell is a little more modern, dating to the nineteenth century.
This tunnel leads down to what was once the largest water cistern on the fort, with a capacity of 1,500 tonnes. It was damaged during the Second World War, and never fully repaired.
There was a relatively large amount of damage caused during the war which was never properly restored, it was just patched up by the British. Some of that patching up, and more modern repairs, can be seen along the wall.
This is the area where the cannonballs would have once been stored.
View over Birgu.
This was a rather pleasant visit, with much more to see than I thought, but still a great deal more potential for the future. The staff were friendly, particularly the man in the cafe who was full of enthusiasm, and a delight to speak to. Part of the funding from the EU came because of the cultural events which would be held here, I can imagine it’d be an impressive backdrop to many different performances.
There were plans to turn this site into a hotel in the 1990s, which was part of the reason the site fell behind with its maintenance. Although I’m sure that it would have made a grand five star hotel, that would seem a rather unbecoming way for the site to have been used, a museum and cultural centre is a much better idea. There was a decision, which seems logical, to demolish anything which had been built after the British army left, as it was felt that it wouldn’t be an authentic part of the site’s heritage.
This is one of those places I look forwards to coming back to in around fifty years, unless I get fed up with travelling by then. Although I could just watch it on the future equivalent of Youtube I suppose….
The enormity of Fort St. Angelo, and the hundreds of years of history, mean that there are tunnels and passageways going off in nearly every conceivable direction. Unfortunately, visitors can only go down a few of the tunnels, corridors and arches, with the rest being something of a mystery as to just where exactly they lead.
This is a war shelter that was created during the Second World War, with it turning corners to help avoid any damage caused from blasts. It was though never fully completed, as other larger shelters were created across the fort.
This is the entertainment block built in the 1920s for the troops to use, consisting primarily of a large cinema and billiard room. A TV room and bar was added in the 1960s at the rear of the building. It’s currently empty inside, although the former bar area is still visibly there, but there’s not much else present. Hopefully in years to come this will all become part of the museum, it must be exciting for Heritage Malta to have so many buildings to play with on this site.
The Great Siege of Malta took place in 1565 and it was the defences of Fort St. Angelo which helped the Knights of St. John to hold off against the attack of the Ottoman Empire. After the siege the Knights constructed their new capital city, Valletta, which is just over the water from this fort.
In one of the exhibition rooms is this granite cannonball, from that attack on the fort by the forces of the Ottoman Empire. A rather fascinating piece of history, as if the Ottomans had been victorious than the course of history for Christians across Europe could have been very different.
This building now holds three interpretation rooms covering the subjects of (i) the centre of the Mediterranean, (ii) the Key to Malta and (iii) a National Icon. But, until relatively recently, these were dormitories for the British military.
Inside the second interpretation room. I’m not sure how the military made a dormitory out of this, it might be historic, but it’s not exactly beautifully lit. Incidentally, I’m aware of the current meaning of the word lit by the nation’s younger generation, but I just mean that’s it not very bright (the former dormitory, not the nation’s younger generation).
This is the room where the British stored gunpowder. Unsurprisingly, the British military didn’t want any little incidents involving gunpowder, so they kept it nice and safely in this room. Next to this room is a little lobby area where those men dealing with the gunpowder would have to change clothing as their uniform and boots might be “contaminated”. They would change into white clothing and canvas shoes, with absolutely no metal present, before they could play about with the gunpowder. The boxes in the storage room would be made of zinc and there was a glass and brass panel between this room and the shifting lobby.
I have no idea what this means, since I’m not an expert in gunpowder (or indeed an expert in anything to do with the military if I’m being honest), but this is an original British sign painted onto the wall.
This is the oldest sally port (a secure entrance) in Malta, which formerly linked Ferramolino’s fortifications to St. Angelo’s Battery. It remained in place until the nineteenth century when improvements (well, changes) to the fort by the British took it out of use.
The passageway.
The partly unblocked end of the passage. The building which this leads to was used by the British military as a dormitory until it was recently turned into a museum, and it’s now interpretation room 1.
I’ve read a lot this week about the Knights of St. John, the Christian crusaders who successfully defended themselves against the Ottoman forces in their sixteenth century attack on Malta. So important was the victory that Queen Elizabeth I said that Christendom across Europe would have been endangered if the Ottoman Muslims had been victorious.
The Knights governed Malta from 1530 until 1798 (they had lost their previous base in Rhodes – a city I now want to visit), when the French threw them out. The British reclaimed the islands in 1800, but they then came under British rule until the late twentieth century when Malta went for independence.
Seeing lots of the history of the Knights this week, it did feel quite unfortunate that they were no longer involved in Malta. However, I discovered today on my visit to Fort. St Angelo that they’re back in the fort that they originally did so much to create. They were given a 99-year lease to the upper part of the fort, which is one of the most impressive defensive structures that I’ve seen (and more on which in other posts), in 1998.
There is an agreement that the flag of Malta and the flag of the Knights will fly over the fort, which is just visible in my photo above. I like it when history does that, it feels right to me that the Knights are there. The only slightly unfortunate thing is that they’re now occupying some historic parts of the fort which visitors now can’t routinely visit.
