Grand Master La Vallette, the
gallant hero of the Great Siege of Malta in 1565, realised that if the Order
was to maintain its hold on Malta, it had to provide for adequate defences,
and so he drew up a plan for a new fortified city on the Sceberras peninsula.
An impressive and solemn ceremony of the
laying of the foundation stone was held on 28 March 1566. The newly founded
city - named Valletta after the Grand Master - became the seat of power in
1571. Valletta boasts a unique mixture of splendid fortifications and elegant
architecture - an architecture dominated by the Baroque and owing its
harmonious appearance to its grid pattern studded with cathedrals, churches,
palaces and secular buildings.
Architects and engineers, painters and
sculptors, master masons and artisans from all over Europe and the Maltese
Islands constructed and embellished the City.
The Citta Umilissima is an Art City in Europe
,
a member of the Walled Towns Friendship Circle, a UNESCO World Heritage Site
in its entirety, and was declared (for the first time) as the June 1998
European City of Culture by the European Union.
The City invites one to soak up the street-scapes
of its parishes at a leisurely pace. Streets are composed of such
three-dimensional beauty that one is made to stop and stare at the artistry of
a facade unfolding its themes and variations, beckoning one into a pool of
tranquillity, either domestic or ecclesiastic, administrative or social. It
invites one to ponder on the inhabitants - bygone and present - with their
inherited and developing relationships with their City - citizens with traits
and idiosyncrasies moulded by the City's trials and satisfactions.
Valletta's dense proliferation of imagery and
contrasts provides both vigorous and marvellous serenity and welcomes the
visitor to a multiple richness letting one immerse oneself into a girdled
metropolis offering a panoply of tastes.
