Walking. Gossip. Travel.

Tag: Birgu

  • Malta – South Eastern Region – Birgu – Malta Maritime Museum

    Malta Maritime Museum is located in Birgu in a building which was formerly used by the Royal Naval Bakery. After the end of the Second World War the building was instead used by the Admiralty Constabulary and it remained empty after the British left in 1979. After some years when the building stated to deteriorate it was decided to turn it into the country’s first dedicated maritime museum.

    Visitors enter on the ground floor and most of the displays are on the first floor. I decided to enter the museum by wandering by the ticket desk and finding myself in the exhibits area, before realising that I had probably better check with the ticket desk. This was excusable as there were some VIPs cluttering up the reception area, making it hard for me to ascertain what I was supposed to do. After I presented my Heritage Malta pass the staff member gave me a map of the site, which proved helpful in working out where I was supposed to go.

    One of the first sights in the museum is this Roman anchor, with this being one of the largest which has been found.

    In a slightly separate part of the building is some old machinery in quite a spacious display area. Indeed, the whole museum is spacious and they appear to have more space than they do exhibits at times. The building is probably too large for the museum as it currently stands, but they can always expand and keep building up the already substantial number of exhibits.

    Some kind of motor thing for a boat.

    The Knights of the Order of St. John, who ran the islands for centuries, had a strong navy. This is a model of one of their carracks, the Santa Maria, which was originally a Muslim ship which the Knights pinched. The Knights were very proud of their ship until a boy decided he’d play with gunpowder on its deck and managed to set the cannons off all by himself. In what could be considered as an unfortunate incident, the ship sank. It’s still there, at the bottom of Galley Creek.

    This is quite special, it’s the instruction manual for signalling on ships owned by the Knights.

    A replica of the naval uniform worn by a Captain fighting for the Knights.

    The Amati Column, which was erected in 1651, formerly stood on the waterfront in Valletta, named after the Italian Knight who financed a shelter in the area.

    There are some models of ships in the museum, this is one of the larger and more impressive ones. At this point I would comment on the lighting in the museum as it was nearly dark in some places, making reading the information boards difficult. They also decided that it would be useful to make the writing quite small, which added a game show element to proceedings, it became a little like a Krypton Factor test to try and see the text.

    Sailors weren’t allowed to gamble on board boats, but they did anyway. These are dice which the sailors created from whittling away bone, with an uncompleted one on the right hand side.

    This figurehead from HMS Hibernia was for a time located at the entrance to the nearby Fort St. Angelo and there is a sign there indicating where it used to be. When the British military left Malta they took this figurehead with them and between 1979 and 1994 it was displayed at the Royal Navy Museum in Portsmouth. When this maritime museum in Malta opened the British kindly sent it back again.

    The log book from HMS Hibernia.

    A collection of items from the NAAFI.

    A recreation of what a Royal Navy bar would have looked like.

    A letter from the Rear Admiral to the President of Malta following the departure of British troops.

    Overall, I liked this museum as it was spacious and there was plenty to see. The lighting perhaps needs looking at in places and it was a shame that there weren’t many other visitors when I was there. It’s a comprehensive museum covering maritime history from the earliest days right through to the end of the twentieth century. It’s not as polished as some of the other newer Heritage Malta museums, but still worth visiting.

  • Malta – South Eastern Region – Birgu – Cafe Rouge

    This Italian restaurant isn’t part of the UK chain, but is an independent restaurant located near to the harbour area in Cospicua, near Birgu. It was rather busier than I had expected, although the reviews for the restaurant are excellent, and it transpired that I was fortunate to get a table. I arrived around ten minutes before they were serving lunch, but by the time they had offered the menu and taken the order, the wait wasn’t noticeable.

    I didn’t order this tower of beer.

    It didn’t seem right to sit in an Italian restaurant eating pasta without having a glass of white wine. Since I don’t understand wine, I just order the house wine which nearly always tastes fine and is just at the price point that I prefer.

    This is the homemade tortellini Maltese sausage pasta filled with local sausage, spinach, blue cheese, walnuts and a sun-dried tomato paste. It was as well presented as pasta can be and cheese was served alongside for me to sprinkle on. The pasta was excellent, the blue cheese was evident by taste and the sausage meat had a pleasant flavour to it. The walnuts added texture and the tomato flavour was rich, with the portion size being sufficiently generous.

    Service was attentive and polite throughout, with a staff member noticing I had entered and helped me to find a table. I struggled slightly to get the bill at the end of the meal, but that was more because I think they were trying not to rush customers, and I was hardly in a massive rush to get to the next museum. The prices were a little expensive, but that was perhaps inevitable for a fashionable harbourside restaurant.

    I can only imagine how busy this restaurant must get during the summer months, and it’s clearly in a wealthy area given the amount of yachts in the nearby harbour.

  • Malta – South Eastern Region – Birgu – Steps

    Just two random photos of Birgu streets which I thought looked and felt quite atmospheric. The Knights of St. John first settled in Birgu when they were kicked out of Rhodes by the Ottoman Empire, and steps were designed so that Knights could run up and down them in armour.

  • Malta – South Eastern Region – Birgu – Hiring a Boat

    We hire a boat every year for Hike Norfolk to go around the Norfolk Broads on. I admit it’s not quite like this one though….

    I’m also not entirely sure that we could afford the weekly rates….

  • Malta – South Eastern Region – Birgu – The Inquisitor’s Palace

    Located in Vittoriosa, this is one of the best examples of a former Inquisitor’s Palace building still in existence. It was unfortunately mauled about a bit internally by the British when we had taken control of Malta from the early part of the nineteenth century, but there is plenty of history remaining.

    The Knights of St. John built this palace to be used as the civil law courts  in the 1530s, shortly after they had moved from Rhodes. They built it on top of an earlier building, of which some of the above foundations are still visible. When the new capital of Valletta was constructed the courts moved there, so the inquisitor, or someone who checks up on how the Catholic faith is being obeyed, moved in four years later.

    Part of a former ceiling, looked down on from above.

    The grand staircase added in 1733 by Inquisitor Francesco Stoppani.

    An external well which was constructed in the mid-seventeenth century to be used as the depository of the communal cell’s toilet.

    A rather graphic depiction of Jesus, the top one is made from wood and dates to the seventeenth century, whilst the bottom one is made from papier-mache and dates to the nineteenth century.

    This is a twentieth century replica piece of clothing which I don’t entirely understand. Similar items were worn by individuals as an act of penance, so I’m guessing it’s for that purpose…

    The torture chamber, which the museum makes clear was rarely used and it was only ever in operation to try and extract confessions rather than as a punishment. The inquisitors in Malta weren’t seen as brutal as those in other countries and the aim was to encourage people to follow good traditional Catholic values rather than to punish them excessively.

    The Grand Inquisitor’s Chamber, where decisions would have been made and sentences announced.

    The inquisitors believed in secrecy and these are the steps which went up to the Grand Inquisitor’s Chamber. The window on the left of the steps looks into the torture chamber and would be closed to prevent anyone from seeing who was walking up the stairs.

    The entrance to one of the many cells, which is irritatingly low down.

    Graffiti in the cells scratched into the limestone by inmates over the centuries.

    Hygiene in the cells was considered important and there was drainage and the facilities to deposit waste in every cell.

    This is an extensive palace and there was plenty of see, including the former kitchens, the chapel (which the British turned into a corridor), the bedroom of the Inquisitor, the bedroom of the head warder and numerous other prison cells. It all really became a little bit of a maze, with the directions not always entirely clear. There was also a permanent display about Christmas and I didn’t quite understand the relevance of that to the whole museum.

    The inquisitors were not the harsh men which they have more recently been made out to be, they were simply the enforcers of the church which was immensely powerful at the time. The inquisitors also used the role as career enhancing in many cases, there were 62 inquisitors in total of whom 27 became cardinals and two became Pope. The two men who were elevated to the position of Pope were Fabio Chigi from 1655 until 1667 and Antonio Pignatelli from 1691 until 1700, with the former being guilty of some appalling nepotism, whilst the latter put an end to the practice.

    I’m sure though that more could be done with the museum, as some of the items marked as being original clearly weren’t and there was frequently no explanation as to what a particular room was for. They have far more rooms than they have exhibitions and some exhibits were rather padded out and not particularly informative.

    However, it was a fascinating building which an immense history, one which has fortunately managed to avoid being damaged in wars or changed too much internally. It’s just a shame that they didn’t really explain the architecture of more of the rooms, I was more engaged with the history of the building than looking at displays about Christmas.

  • Malta (South Eastern Region) – Birgu – Fort St. Angelo (War Shelter)

    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.

  • Malta (South Eastern Region) – Birgu – Fort St. Angelo (Entertainment Block)

    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.

  • Malta (South Eastern Region) – Birgu – Fort St. Angelo (Ottoman Cannonball)

    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.

  • Malta (South Eastern Region) – Birgu – Fort St. Angelo (Dormitories)

    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).

  • Malta (South Eastern Region) – Birgu – Fort St. Angelo (Shifting Lobby)

    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.