Malta Part 2

Why is it while at home I’m happy to have two slices of toast – wholemeal of course- dairy free spread and lemon and lime marmalade washed down with an oat-milk latte, but when I stay in a hotel I eat as if eating breakfast was the sole aim of my life. I have no idea. But unable to restrain myself iPhone my way down to the breakfast room of my luxury boutique hotel, ordered a soya latte and plundered the groaning breakfast buffet with four visits to satisfied my craving for cheese, ham, salami, fruit salad, yoghurt, the Viennoiserie,  jam and orange juice. 

After this meal I staggered back to my room to prepare for the day of discovery in Valletta. I have read the book, I had a map and my phone would always come to my rescue when I got lost. I had not appreciated that Valletta, though the old city is small, is very steep. I’m so glad that the weather was dry while I was there, because some of the streets were so steep wet day might make them very slippery and I have a troubling predisposition for crashing melodramatically to the ground in embarrassing circumstances.

My first task was to get hold of a little pile of Euros, to pay for my daily expenses. I found a bank with an ATM and made my withdrawal. When I first travelled to Europe changing money was a distinctly difficult process. You had normally, to do it in the bank. You therefore, had to queue and hope that the clerk was a better linguist then you were. You presented your notes or your travellers cheques and your passport and if you were lucky nearly 20 to 30 minutes later you could walk out of the bank with your Lire or Marks or Francs or Pesetas. Now you take the same action as you do in the UK, this will continue to works well until something goes wrong with the system. We are brilliant at taking everything now for granted. But on this occasion the system worked and with €50 rattling around in my wallet I determined to discover Valletta.

Valletta is without doubt the easiest city in the world to visit. Why? Because it is only 1 km from end to end and it is, at its widest point 600 m across. On three sides it is protected by the sea and the fourth side consists of the sprawling and busy suburb of Floriana. 

The city owes its existence to the fight in the 16th century against the aggressive land grabbing of the newly emboldened Ottoman Turks inspired by Suleman the Magnificent’s capture of Constantinople. Malta, if one wishes to control the shipping lanes of the central Mediterranean is the perfect base. Valletta has a stupendous natural harbour making it perfect for ship-based industry. Having been born within a hundred yards of a ship repairing yard and with the whole of my mother’s family engaged in shipbuilding and repairing, to see another active ship repair yard in Malta filled me with mixed emotions. 

Great to see it being done but sad that among the industries decimated by the vandalism of the 1980s, shipbuilding was one that effectively disappeared in Britain. At the time of my parents being born the majority of ships in the world in terms of tonnage were built in Britain. Glasgow, Belfast, Tyneside and the Mersey were the true centres of this trade and even Newport has its ship repair yards as well as its more famous ship breaking yard, Cashmore’s.

Valletta has not only its position to make it easy to defend but is surrounded on all sides by massive defensive ramparts. The main City Gate is the newest and least defensible access point to the city looking out at the Triton Fountain and the Bus Station tumbling down the hill from the ultramodern Bridge and Parliament Building. This Renzo Piano designed  modernist and rather brutalist building was constructed to serve the national and individualistic personality of the City and of the Republic. As with any modernist public building its design met with much criticism from lovers of the traditional architecture that is normal in this most southerly of European capitals. To my mind it is a simple modern structure that asserts the character of the new Malta, tiny in geopolitical terms but proud and independent members of the European Union. From the City Gate the whole of the town is simple and for the most part flat as we follow Republic Street which ends up with Fort St Elmo at the conclusion of the kilometre walk.

Turn right when you pass the Parliament Building and before you reach Merchants Street you preach the ruins of the old Opera Theatre where in his time in Malta my father saw the famous but ageing Italian opera star Amelita Galli-Curci. I really don’t think he particularly enjoyed the experience. Listening to an old singer whose vocal cords are shot is a painful experience.  

The Royal Opera House was destroyed in the Second World War but the ruins have a contemporary existence as an open-air music venue. And it has seen lots of good and loud rock musicians in recent years. 

Follow on past the old opera venue and you cross first Merchant Street and then St Paul Street and at last come to the city’s main Park, The Upper Barrakka Gardens. As with everything in Valletta it is small, there’s not a lot of greenery but what it has is the most magnificent view of the Grand Harbour and the three cities, the original settlements grouped round the Grand Harbour itself. There are a number of monuments in the Gardens including a pugnacious bust of Winston Churchill, whose determination to retain Malta as a base in the Second World War, often at a terrible cost to the island, to control the supply routes to Egypt and the Middle East and as the Allies gained the upper hand to facilitate the invasion first of Sicily and then Italy.