arx journal volume 8

ARX- ON LINE JOURNAL OF MILITARY ARCHITECTURE

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ARX is researched, designed, produced, and published electronically by MilitaryArchitecture.comand is vailable (FREE of charge) in PDF format.

This journal focuses primarily, but not exclusively, on the fortifications of the Maltese islands, and is downloadable from MilitaryArchitecture.com website. ARX is subject to the provisions of international copyright laws.

MilitaryArchitecture.com was set up to focus on and promote the study of military architecture and fortification around the world. It seeks to bring together and build an extensive international corpus of information, data, and ideas – research papers, lectures, videos, forums, conferences, publications, etc., – that are freely available on the web and make these educational resources available to researchers and students through direct internet access via this website. The overriding scoped is an educational one, aimed at the promotion of scholarship in the study and teaching of military architecture and the history of fortification.

Military Architecture.com is committed to diffusing a proper understanding of the art and science of fortress building to as wide an international audience as possible. MilitaryArchitecture.com seeks, primarily, to focus the attention of scholars, researchers, and the public alike on the fortress as a structure, and on fortifications as a works of architecture and engineering, emphasizing the art and science, and history, of fortress design, fortress construction and building techniques, and materials, as well as provide information on modern efforts at conservation and restoration of historic fortified buildings and sites around the world.

Contact details can be found at www.militaryarchitecture.com

ISSUE 8 / JULY 2011

CONTENTS

1. Malta restores her historic fortifications2. A Fortifications Interpretation Centre in Valletta3. Bracing Mdina's falling ramparts4. A Cubete Artillero at Mdina?, by Dr. Stephen C. Spiteri5. Caponier unearthed at Vittoriosa, by Dr. Stephen C. Spiteri6. Restoration of St Anthony Battery, by DLH, by Dr. Stephen C. Spiteri7. The Templar Fortress of Tartous, Syria by Arch. Zeina el-Cheikh8. St. Thomas Tower and Battery, by Dr. Stephen C. Spiteri9. News items and commentaries 2010-201110. A chapel on the ramparts, by Arch. Edward Said11. Madliena Tower - Malta's 'Martello Tower', by Dr Stephen C. Spiteri12. The fortress of Elvas, Portugal, nominated for World Heritage status, by Prof. Domingos Bucho


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Editorial

This edition of ARX, as suggested by the cover page, is dedicated primarily to the extensive restoration works currently under way on the historic fortifications of the Maltese islands. These substantial works of restoration on the fortifications of Valletta, Mdina, Vittoriosa, and the Gozo Citadel represent the first ever major investment in modern times that has focused on the conservation, preservation, and presentation of Malta's historic forts - a truly historical feat in its own right. The four major projects are being part-financed by the European Union through the European Regional Development Fund under Operational Programme I and are estimated to cost around 36 million Euros. The whole initiative is being co-ordinated on behalf of the Maltese government by the Ministry for Resources and Rural Affairs through the Restoration Directorate in the Project Design and Implementation Department.

Apart from their inherent economic and cultural benefits, these works have also provided a good opportunity for archaeological investigations and, at least on three occasions, have brought to light important archaeological remains of Byzantine, medieval, and eighteenth century fortifications and outerworks. Two of the articles in this issue, as a matter of fact, are dedicated to the discovery of the medieval remains at Mdina and Mondion's caponier at Birgu respectively.

Good coverage has also been given to other restoration interventions, namely the extensive restoration of St. Anthony Battery at Ras-il-Qala in Gozo by Malta's long-standing and leading voluntary heritage trust, Din l-Art Helwa, and the restoration works which were undertaken some years back by the Restoration Unit on St. Thomas Bay Tower and Battery in Marsascala.

Other articles seek to draw attention to fortifications in Syria, Portugal, and Vauban's legacy around the world. All the articles and news items in this issue of ARX have been featured on MilitaryArchitecture.com (MA) in 2010 and the first half of 2011.

We are very glad to see that both ARX and MilitaryArchitecture.com have attracted considerable readership over the past 18 months since the site was been set up. Our latest statistics show that the MA website has registered over 3.4 million hits, with over 89,000 unique visits, and attracts some 307 new visitors a day.

Today, it provides a unique online archive of some 1,250 scholarly articles and resources found on the web. The website is continually upgraded and fitted with new features. The latest of these is an interactive GIS map of Malta that allows visitors to explore 360 degree panoramic images of various fortifications created by www.Maltain360.com. A quarterly online newsletter is also being produced and sent to all registered members.

As always, ARX and MilitaryArchitecture.com are primarily focused on the fortress as a STRUCTURE, i.e., on those factors that influence the fortress' shape, form, structure, and function. We at ARX endeavour to promote the proper study of the art and science of fortification by instilling, first and foremost, a feeling and an appreciation for architecture and its related fields.

For in our humble opinion, a fortress had first to be built before it could be put to the onerous task of defence, and the skills that were needed to design and build a fortress were not necessarily the same as those that were required to defend it. Military engineers, therefore, had to be designers and builders first, and soldiers second. Indeed, such was the level of specialization required that, by the eighteenth century, most European armies had learnt to divide the task between their engineering and artillery corps.

The growing interest in 'modern' fortifications has unfortunately tended to draw attention away from the fortress to its armaments, and, indeed, many books on fortification, despite their titles, tend to devote most of their pages to guns and their equipment rather than to those architectural and engineering features and issues that were behind the design and construction of the ramparts and the defensive structures which, together, made up, fashioned, and defined the enveloping carapace of a fortress.

We make it a point, therefore, to see that most of the articles featured both in ARX and on our website are chosen for their academic quality, and for their relevance to the study of the fortress as a structure and as a building – the architectural and technical aspects, the nature and types of building materials, the roles of military engineers, and the varied typologies of fortress design and construction throughout the world.

A great emphasis is also placed on featuring conservation and restoration projects around the globe and, in the case of MilitaryArchitecture.com, to provide links to conservation and restoration sites, as these allow conservators and students of the subject to view comparative case studies and follow the progress of the various efforts over time.

John Spiteri Gingell Editor and Webmaster


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After more than half a century of neglect, abuse, and misuse, Malta's historic fortifications have finally begun to receive the attention that they rightfully deserve. Extensive restoration works are currently underway on some of the most important historic fortresses of the Maltese islands. The project is being part-financed by the European Union through the European

Regional Development Fund under Operational Programme I and will cost around 36 million Euros. These works, which are being co-ordinated on behalf of the Maltese government by the Ministry for Resources and Rural Affairs, represent the first ever major large scale restoration intervention on Malta’s historic fortifications and are aimed at safeguarding and promoting the island’s military

architecture heritage as a central feature of the nation’s cultural assets

Malta's military architect heritage forms a central pillar of its unique heritage resources - an astonishing wealth of physical remains from the past which stand monument to a unique historical experience spanning thousands of years.

Malta’s strategic location in the centre of the Mediterranean Sea, coupled with her excellent natural harbours, translated into a leading role in the military struggle for the region - a historical process which was accompanied by an incessant investment in the fortification of the island.

To many, this legacy of forts, fortresses, citadels, towers, batteries, redoubts, entrenchments and concrete pillboxes constitutes one of the finest collections of military architecture to be found anywhere in the world and comprises, in the words of the

Malta restores her historicfortifications

St. John Bastion and main ditch, Valletta.


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late Professor Quentin Hughes, a monumental heritage ‘for sheer concentration and majesty quite unmatched’.

Despite its inherent historical and architectural significance, the larger part of this vast architectural heritage is to be found in a poor state of preservation. The story of its predicament can be largely traced to the last fifty years or so and began with the terrible punishment inflicted during WWII, to be followed by sometimes insensitive development that accompanied the industrialization and urbanization of the post-war period. The overall picture that unfortunately emerges today is one of an accelerating deterioration of the architectural fabric, compounded further by an overall under-appreciation and under-utilization of such important assets.

The effort that is now necessary to redress this state of affairs is inevitably a massive undertaking by any standards. Suffice it to say that in the Grand Harbour area alone, there are over 25 kms of ramparts and bastions. Added to these are then the fortified citadels of Mdina, Gozo, and Fort Chambrai, together with 12 km of Victoria lines, and dozens of other nineteenth-century forts, and scores of towers, batteries, redoubts, entrenchments and hundreds of WWII concrete pillboxes and defences –- in all forming a combined total of some SIXTY kilometres of ramparts

Aware of the scale and magnitude of such a task, the Maltese government had sought, as way back as 2004, to benefit from the assistance offered by the European Union through its various

programmes to fund the study, documentation, and intervention on Malta's historic fortifications.

Realizing, however, that attempting to address the whole span and extent of the conservation problem in the short term, was both unrealistic and financially difficult, the Maltese authorities chose to adopt a conservation strategy based on priorities and holistic programmes of restoration rather than piecemeal interventions.

To this end, four major sites were chosen for restoration, namely the land front of the fortified city of VALLETTA, Malta’s most important work of military architecture, the fortress of VITTORIOSA, Malta’s first maritime city, the fortress of MDINA, Malta’s ancient capital, and the CITTADELLA in Gozo.

The choice was not a subjective one, but one based on the historical and architectural importance and significance of the respective sites; on the extent of the damage and decay to their physical fabric, and, last but not least, on the sites’ inherent economic and tourism potential. Indeed, these four sites are already a central and important feature of the island’s architectural identity and form crucial elements in its tourism product. Malta simply cannot afford to lose them.

The four projects comprise a substantial investment involving some 135,000m2 of rampart elevations over a combined perimeter length of around 6 km at an estimated cost of around 36 million Euros, spread over a

Medieval enceinte, Gozo Citadel.

Advanced Gate along the Birgu land front.


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period of seven years – no mean task by any standards. This project is part-financed by the European Union through the European Regional Development Fund under Operation Programme I ‘Investing in Competitiveness for a Better Quality of Life’ for Cohesion Policy 2007-2013, with a co-financing rate of 85% EU Funds (ERDF) and 15% National Funds.”

Design and implementation

The design, implementation, and co-ordination of the fortifications restoration project was entrusted to the Restoration Directorate within the Works Division, in the Ministry of Resources and Rural Affairs.

The Restoration Directorate is the government entity charged with the restoration of public property. First set up in 1997, it now comprises a specialized workforce of some 180 restoration professionals and technicians and can also call on the wider resources of the Works Division of which it forms part.

The projected works, for which specialized studies and tenders have been under preparation by the Restoration Directorate for the past number of years, will enable large parts of the historic ramparts to be cleaned, repaired, and opened to the public as places of cultural and leisure activities.

Already, these works have begun to give results. The preparation works for the consolidation of

the Mdina ramparts and those of Birgu (as shown in the following articles), the former made possible by another project, have unearthed important and previously unknown remains of medieval ramparts and eighteenth-century outerworks. These will now serve to enrich the understanding of the development of Mdina’s and Birgu's ramparts and, simultaneously, provide an added attraction for visitors to these two sites.

The significance of this restoration project extends far beyond the physical restoration of the architectural structures of the fortifications. Like all historical buildings, Malta's ramparts of stone provide a unique sense of place and a continuity with the past, fostering

St. Andrew's Tenaille, Valletta


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an emotional attachment to the land and an enduring bond between generations. Perhaps above all, the unique military architecture heritage of Malta and Gozo makes the Maltese islands different from other places and, as such, provides an important national asset in the Islands’ tourism product.

The restoration programmes are also aimed to boost the regeneration of the areas within and around these fortifications, to provide an improved quality of life for the communities living in and around these historical sites, and also to help create the potential for new jobs in the field of restoration, as well as to provide great scope for further specialization in this field.

As already mentioned above, the project is divided into four distinct areas of intervention, namely:

Valletta: Valletta, or Citta’ Humilissima, as it was called, is Malta’s most important work of military architecture. In the sixteenth century, this fortress of the Hospitaller Knights of the Order of St. John was considered as a model of fortification. Today, Valletta is a world heritage site and, as such, deserves to be presented with the dignity that such a monument

deserves. The main scope of this project involves the restoration of the heavily consumed fabric of the city’s bastions and their fissured underlying bedrock, from which most of the formidable ramparts were carved out. The interventions will focus largely on the city’s land front enceinte, with its outer screen of counterguards and advanced works, which is the most problematic from a conservation point of

view. The project also seeks to recuperate and rehabilitate hitherto inaccessible areas and spaces within the ramparts in such a way so as to maximize the cultural and economical potential of the fortifications.

Vittoriosa: Vittoriosa (Birgu) is Malta’s first maritime fortified city, rendered famous by its valiant resistance during the Great Siege

D'Homedes Bastion, Mdina.

Micro-piling works along Mdina's ramparts.


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Micro-piling works and consolidation of terrain along Mdina's ramparts.


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of 1565. The project focuses on a range of salient conservation issues that involve the restoration and rehabilitation of the city’s extensive bastioned enceinte; the recuperation and rehabilitation of a vast section of hitherto inaccessible areas and spaces within the fortifications with the aim of reintegrating them within the public domain for the enjoyment of the public; the enhancement of the LEGIBILITY of the main fortified elements (in places hidden by modern accretions); and the re-establishment of the physical connections in the Cottonera area between the Vittoriosa, Bormla, and Kalkara seafronts. The project also seeks to introduce a modern lighting system designed to enhance the appreciation of the ramparts and their features at night, to create a pleasant recreational area inside the land front ditch, and to enhance the intramural areas of the historic city.

Mdina: Mdina’s long history as Malta’s ancient capital, coupled with its strategic and scenic location on a hill in the centre of the island and its rich diversity of architectural heritage features not only make it the oldest fortified settlement in Malta but also one of the most aesthetically pleasing and sculpturally powerful sites to be experienced in the island.

Together with Valletta, Mdina has long been one of the main pillars of Malta’s tourism industry – a cultural and architectural treasure house that

Bridging of breach in bastion wall, Birgu.

Restoration of Mdina's ramparts.

Micro-piling works at Mdina.

Restoration of masonry fabric.


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the Maltese people simply cannot afford to lose. The main scope of this project is both to consolidate the fragile terrain on which the bastion walls and historic palaces are built in order to diminish, and possibly stop, further settlement and damage, and to restore the ramparts’ consumed architectural fabric.

Cittadella: Gozo’s ancient stronghold, occupies a central position in the Gozitan landscape and culture life. It commands a

central position in the heart of the island and provides one of the most evocative and imposing monuments of military architecture to be found in the Maltese islands. The main scope of this project is designed to restore and repair the fortress’ consumed architectural fabric along all of its combined bastioned-medieval enceinte and its outerworks, as well as to consolidate the fragile cliff-face along the northern part of the perimeter walls on which stand the oldest surviving medieval ramparts.

Apart from the actual physical restoration interventions, the project also seeks to improve the presentatrion of the fortifications and their interpretation. This will involve the installation of adequate signing and information panels around the various sites as well as the introduction of co-ordinated, sustainable, and economic lighting systems which will provide evening and night-time appreciation of the fortifications of Valletta, Mdina, Birgu and Cittadella.

The project will also include the setting up of a FORTIFICATIONS INTERPRETATION CENTRE dedicated specifically to explaining and showcasing Malta’s unique patrimony of forts and fortifications.(see article on page 14). This centre will be located within a large and unutilized 16th-century building connected to the Valletta ramparts which is currently being restored and rehabilitated to house a permanent

The crumbling ramparts of Despuig

Bastion, Mdina.

Proposed lighting for Post of Castile (Image reproduced by courtesy of the Restoration Directorate).


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St. Michael Bastion, Gozo Citadel.

Restoration of Porta Superiore, the main gate of the Birgu fortifications.


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Saints Peter and Paul Bastion (Upper Barracca), Valletta, the highest point of the Valletta land front fortifications,overlooking the Grand Harbour.


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exhibition with traditional displays and 3D computer animations, an audio-visual theatre,and a library.

There is no denying that the ERDF project has set in motion a nation-wide process of ‘redoscovery’ of the islands’ fortifications and a new urgent awareness for the need of a thorough revalorization of all of Malta's military architecture heritage.

Equally, it has set in motion a new culture of ‘holistic’ conservation projects in a country hitherto lacking a tradition of large-scale restoration interventions. The benefits of this conservation and restoration effort, the first of its kind to be undertaken in the Maltese islands, will hopefully spill over onto the other fortifications equally worthy of preservation and act as a catalyst for their productive re-integration into the cultural, social, and economic spheres.

The ERDF project, when completed, will have brought about the preservation of the fabric of a unique architectural heritage; enabled the recuperation of inaccessible areas of the fortifications and their rehabilitation into more productive assets; ensured the removal of dangerous structures, and introduced improved lighting and interpretation facilities to create a more refined cultural tourism product.

As both official and public awareness of the fortifications’ inherent significance, uniqueness, and untapped potential continue to grow and crystallize into more calls for action and interventions, new resources will need to be identified and directed towards these worthy causes.

Already other new projects have been signalled out and are now on the drawing board, awaiting allocation of funds. Amongst these are Fort St Elmo, Fort St Angelo, and Fort Ricasoli. The private sector, too, has understood the potential that renovated historic fortifications can provide and has sought involvement in other major works of fortification such as Fort Manoel, Fort Chambrai, and Fort Tigne. Hopefully, others will follow.

St. John Bastion, Valletta.

Bridging of breach in face of St John Bastion, Birgu.


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A Fortifications Interpretation Centre inValletta

The ERDF projects directed towards the restoration and conservation of the historic fortifications of the Maltese islands, currently underway, have provided a unique opportunity to address another serious shortcoming that has plagued the presentation of Malta's unique patrimony of military architecture heritage - namely the absence of an interpretative centre,

or museum, dedicated specifically to showcasing Malta’s unique patrimony of forts and fortifications to both Maltese and foreign visitors alike.

To this end, the Ministry for Resources and Infrastructure, through its Restoration Directorate, has taken the initiative to set up a Fortifications Interpretaton Centre, a sort of museum-cum-resource centre, dedicated specifically to expounding and explaining the history aand technicalities of Malta’s rich heritage of forts and fortifications, and the fascinating manner in which these formidable structures were constructed.

The building chosen to house this Fortifications Interpretation Centre is a large sixteenth century block situated near Biagio Steps at the farther end of St Mark Street, in Valletta. It was chosen to house the

Biagio Steps Exmination Hall, prior to commencement of restoration and reconstruction works.


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Premises for Fortifications Interpretatin Centre nearing completion of structural and restoration interventions.


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permanent exhibition largely for its vast interior spaces and its location, which adjoining St Andrew Bastion, is both central and provides direct access to Valletta’s ramparts. The proposed new role will also provide an opportunity to rehabilitate this structure which, unfortunately, has lain derelict for the past number of years. Until recently, part of the building served as an examination hall, while the upper most floor, level with Melita Street, was demolished during the Second World War and never rebuilt.

Little is known about this majestic building itself, with its sombre, if somewhat plain, façade.

Graphic proposal of FIC interior displays.


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Escutcheons with the coat of arms of Grand Master de Verdalle fixed on its facade suggest that it was constructed, or completed, sometime during his magistracy. Located next to the Marsamxett Gate, on the street leading to and from the gate, it must have been constructed as some form of bombproof magazine for the storage of merchandise off-loaded from the ships and other vessels berthed in Marsamxett. Its location close to the Falconeria (used as an armeria di rispetto from the mid-1700s onwards) also suggests some form of military use. Indeed the upper floor of building was used as an artillery school (scuola per gettare bombe) by the Knights.

The building’s spacious vaulted interiors provide excellent exhibition space. The Restoration Directorate’s design proposals seeks to exploit both these spaces and modern computer graphic technology to create a rich multi-media experience that combines both traditional and modern methods of display.

Internal layout

ARX is informed that the Fortifications Interpretation Centre will be divided into six major areas and will contain a reception hall, permanent displays on Hospitaller and British fortifications, an audio-visual theatre/ lecture room, a resource reference library, administrative offices, and a model-makers’ workshop.

The Fortifications Information Centre will display large-scale models of the fortifications of Malta, explanatory and multi-lingual interpretational panels, as well as various interactive multi-media display points designed to explain the history, typology, and technicalities of military architecture. The set-up of an audio-visual theatre designed to accommodate 50 to 60 visitors at a time will feature special computer-generated presentations aimed at introducing audiences to a number of historical and


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technical themes associated with military architecture. The reference library will house specialized books and documents aimed to assist, historians, researchers, restorers, as well as students studying the subject.

The centre will also house a learning-workshop dedicated to activities for organised school groups while the lecture theatre and documentation/reference library will allow the centre to play an important role in the dissemination of specialized knowledge at a higher academic level.

ARX is informed that considerable emphasis has been placed on the ‘interpretation factor’ as the basis for the fundamental concept and philosophy behind the design of this Centre. This approach was chosen specifically to stimulate the discovery, awareness, and dissemination of knowledge among visitors exploring this unique heritage. The museum designers have sought to achieve this in a pleasing and user-friendly manner, and in a visual language that is easily understood by one and all.

Arx is informed that the Fortifications Interpretation Centre is planned to be opened to the public during the course of 2012.

Restoration Directorate model makers at work on a model of Fort St Elmo for display at FIC.

Reconstructed upper floor of FIC, showing library and audio-visual areas.

One of the two large ground floor vaults under restoration.


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Bracing Mdina’s Falling Ramparts

The structural instability of the lateral walls and ramparts of Mdina has long been one of the primary concerns facing the conservation of this old fortified city. Mdina’s long history as Malta’s ancient capital, coupled with its strategic and scenic location on a hill in the centre of the island and its rich diversity of archi-tectural heritage features – its hous-es, palaces, churches and cathedral – not only make it the oldest fortified settlement on the island but, also, one of the most aesthetically pleas-ing and sculpturally powerful sites to be experienced in Malta. Together with Valletta, Mdina has been one of the main pillars of Malta’s tourism industry. It is surely one cultural and architectural treasure house that the Maltese people cannot afford to lose.

Military Architecture.com also believes that from a purely military architecture point of view, the fortifications of Mdina provide a rare and rich combination of unique features that are largely not encountered elsewhere in the Maltese islands – important elements such as the sole surviving remains of Punic, Roman, Byzantine, and Arab ramparts, medieval walls and towers and first-generation Hospitaller bastioned defences.

Amongst these, undeniably is D’Homedes Bastion (or St Paul’s Bastion), which represents the only authentic example of a pre-Great Siege period, first generation Hos-pitaller gunpowder bastion still to be found in an unadulterated state. This bastion was actually the second major Hospitaller bulwark to be

erected on the island and contains a unique internal countermine tunnel with a network of explosive flues and shafts designed to the conventions of the Italian system. Its construction is attributed to Antonio Ferramolino, an Italian military engineer to the Viceroy of Sicily, who was loaned to the knights of St John for a brief period in 1541. The bastion is known to have been under construction in 1547 and was completed in 1551 as attested by the marble escutcheon bearing the coat of arms of Grand Master D’Homedes, now placed on the tableau of the parapet of the right face of the bastion (facing Saqqajja). The only alterations to

the bastion were made to the em-brasures in the parapet during the eighteenth century.

Actually, the first Italian-style, arrow-head bastion built by the knights, was that erected at Fort St Angelo. Likewise called D’Homedes Bastion, this earlier structure, however, was heavily altered, both internally and externally, in the eighteenth century to allow it two house two gunpowder stores, thereby robbing it of important architectural evidence of the rare typology of early Hospitaller bastions. Therefore, this makes the Mdina Bastion all the more unique and important as the sole example of early Hospitaller military

Micro-piling works and consolidation interventions

on D'Homedes Bastion, Mdina.

D'Homedes Bastion

Despuig Bastion

MagazineCurtain


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The photographs on these two pages show the frightening fissures on the ramparts of Mdina and inside the vaulted casemates of Magazine Curtain ... the latter inches away from total collapse.


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architecture built to the conventions of the trace italienne and containing an in-built countermining device. Unfortunately however, large fissures now cut clean right through the heart of the bastion and threaten to bring down the left half and face of the bulwark. The cause of the problem is a result of the simple fact that the Knights, conditioned by the nature of the terrain, were compelled to project their bastion beyond the edge of the existing rocky outcrop that supported the medieval castle which they sought to reinforce. Consequently, the new bastion had to be partly erected on very clayish foundations.

The problem, however, is not limited to D’Homedes Bastion alone, but plagues large tracts of the forti-fied enceinte, especially where the Hospitaller knights were compelled to project their defensive works be-yond the medieval enceinte.

Structural instability

The primary reason for these serous inherent problems revolves around the geological nature of the Mdina plateau. The clayish nature of the site and the peeling effect of the hidden cliff-face, on which rest most of the old lateral walls of the fortress, make a very large part of the walled perimeter unstable. The ramparts and the structures resting upon the cliff-face are all being subjected to hidden pressures from the shifting ground. This situation is particularly worrying in the areas around D’Homedes Bastion, the adjoining Vilhena Palace, at Despuig Bastion (beneath the Cathedral), and all along Magazines Curtain (see photos).

Undeniably, the active instability of the lateral walls constitutes a major concern facing the conservation of Mdina’s architectural fabric. Understanding that this situation could no longer be ignored without courting great risk to the preservation of the island’s unique and priceless patrimony, the Maltese authorities had set out, in 2004, to design and


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implement an ambitious project aimed at the consolidation and restoration of the site. The works currently in progress, co-funded by the European Union through the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), are the result of a long series of studies designed to find the best cost-effective technical solutions to the problem. These preparations involved a long series of geotechnical and structural monitoring sessions, geophysical investigations (including horizontal geo-radar, seismic tests, and geoelectrical tests), and laboratory tests on soil samples. The effort was further complemented by a topographic and photogrammetric survey carried out by the Restoration Unit. Data relating to the rate of increase of the structural cracks present in the rampart walls and those of the overlying palace rooms were also automatically recorded on a daily basis by means of computerized data- loggers.

All the tests confirmed the existence of active ground movement and that the primary mode of failure was observed to be rigid body rotation about the foot of the ramparts’ foundations, with toppling at the top due to yielding of the underlying clay strata.

The results obtained from these investigations were then used as the basis of a design proposal which basically involves the pinning of the ground below the ramparts with various rows of concrete and steel piles inserted to a deep level into the ground. Fundamentally these

Various diagrams and sectional elevations showing the basic model of concrete and steel piles designed to pin the unstable ramparts below Vilhena Palace (Courtesy of the Restoration Directorate, PDID, MRRA).


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interventions are designed to arrest the rotation and movement of the bastion walls by :

limiting the plasticization of the clay owing to excessive bearing pressures; confining the clay under the structures; binding the fractured upper coralline limestone; and reducing both the erosion of

the substrata and ground settlement.

The present ongoing restoration interventions headed by the Restoration Directorate within the Project Design and Implementation Division (PDID) of the Ministry for Resources and Rural Affairs, are designed to be implemented in three distinct phases.

The first phase, of which

works are in progress, includes the Vilhena Palace area (i.e., D’Homedes Bastion, the ramparts underlying Council Square, and Vilhena Palace), while Phases 2 and 3 involve Despuig Bastion and Magazine Curtain respectively. The works are scheduled to be completed by 2013.


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This page, Mdina's semi-circular bulwark during the early stage of excavation. The platform is grafted onto the remains of an earlier antemurale ( or faussebraye) and linked to the masonry socle of the main rampart to the rear. (Photographs, Stephen C Spiteri Collection).


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A Cubete Artillero at Mdina?Dr Stehen C Spiteri Ph.D.

The ongoing ERDF restoration and consolidatiion intervations at Mdina have provided a unique opportunity for an archaeological investigation of various areas outside this city's ancient walls. These investigations have proved very productive and have shed new light on Mdina's ancient system of fortifications. Various archaeological discoveries have revealed how little is really known about the true shape and form of this city’s ancient and medieval fortifications. Foremost amongst these, is the discovery of the remains of what appears to have been a small semi-circular bulwark from the early-gunpowder era. This sheds important new light on both the nature and quality of Mdina’s defences during the fifteenth century as well as the level of the local understanding of the concepts of gunpowder warfare prior to the coming of the Knights of St John to Malta in 1530. The new physical evidence shows that Maltese medieval strongholds and fortified enceintes were far from the simple featureless walled enclosures that they have often been thought to be. On the contrary, the new evidence hints at what was once a sophisticated enceinte stiffened with dedicated defensive structures and devices, clearly evolving over time and absorbing many of the influences that shaped medieval fortress-building throughout Europe and the Mediterranean region.

Maltese late-medieval fortifications

The medieval castle is missing from the Maltese landscape. Its distinctive silhouette of crenellated battlements, towers, and barbicans finds no echo in the network of Hospitaller and British fortifications that dominate the island’s harbours and shores. Nearly all of the ramparts that can be seen today date from a much later period in the history of the island, when the shape and form of military architecture were dictated by gunpowder-operated artillery.

This was not always the case, however, and up until well into the seventeenth century, visitors to these shores could still easily make out the presence of a few ancient strongholds and towers, or remnants of ancient enceintes. Indeed, when the knights of St John first set foot in the Maltese islands in 1530, they found an existing, albeit modest, defensive network of three castellated sites and a handful of outlying towers. Two of the main fortified locations, Mdina and the Gozo Castrum, could then already lay claim to a great antiquity. By the early sixteenth century, however, practically all these defences were considered obsolete, offering very little military advantage to the warring Hospitaller knights in an age increasingly dominated by cannon. Compared to the mighty ramparts and bulwarks of Rhodes, which had bristled with solid, earthen-packed polygonal bastions, aggressive countermines and outerworks (a massive fortified system which the Order of St John had been unwillingly forced to give up to the Turks after a six-month-long siege) the puny fortifications of Mdina, Gozo, and the Castrum Maris were but inconsequential outposts, their weak walls, obsolete, rundown, and decaying.

Consequently, it was not long before these ancient walls began to disappear. Slowly but steadily, as the knights sought desperately to drag the old fortifications into the modern gunpowder era, new

bastions and terrepleined curtains began to replace the fragile old enceintes. In less than a century, large tracts of old walls had given way to new bastions and ramparts alla moderna and by the end of the Order’s 258-year rule, in 1798, very little was left to be seen of what was once the ancient and medieval fortifications of the Maltese islands.

Unfortunately, the Hospitaller records themselves reveal very little about the nature of the then-existing medieval fortification which the Order inherited in 1530. The Hospitallers’ concern to upgrade the fortifications of Mdina, the Grand Castello, and the Castrum Maris with new bastions and terrepleined curtain walls does, however, imply serious limitations in the ability of the then-existing medieval fortifications to protect themselves against artillery bombardment. In other words, the Maltese medieval fortifications were still geared towards a predominantly vertical form of defence. Whatever provisions for artillery defence they had acquired by the time of the arrival of the knights, and the evidence, as will be shown later on, points to the fact that indeed a number of such features were in place by 1530, these elements were mostly the product of the mid-to-late 1400s and, therefore, largely obsolete by the requirements of the sixteenth-century.

Indeed, by the late 1520s, the concept of the fronte bastionato was well understood and most of the fortresses around the shores of the Mediterranean had already acquired a sprinkling of bastions and rondelle. The Maltese island’s lack of artillery-resistant fortifications, therefore, betrays serious limitations in the islander’s abilities to update their system of fortifications, largely because of a lack of financial, organizational, and technical resources and the Spanish crown’s reluctance to invest in the islands’ defences.

In striking contrast, however, no effort was spared to turn the nearb citadel of Tripoli, captured by the Spaniards in 1510, into a


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bastioned fortress heavily fitted out with bastioned ramparts and artillery. Even the few resources available to the Maltese islands were exploited for this venture – Notary P. Alaymo gives a list of seventy-two labourers who were sent from Malta to work on the fortifications of the new Spanish outpost in 1519. Admittedly, Tripoli was a very sensitive frontier stronghold, maintaining Spain’s precarious foothold on the North

African coast and, therefore, by its very nature dangerously exposed to continual Muslim threat – hence the upgrading of its fortifications. But the inability, or even unwillingness, of the Spanish crown to invest in the defences of the Maltese islands, similarly perched on the frontier with Barbary, with more than perfunctory repairs says much about the archipelago’s real strategic value in Spanish eyes.

Evidence for gunpowder defences in pre-Hospitaller Malta.

Concern for artillery defence in the Maltese islands first comes to light in the third quarter of the fifteenth century. The earliest documented mention of cannon dates to 1474 when the sum of 25 uncie was disbursed by the Universitas (Mdina town council) for the purchase of ‘cherti bombardi’

and again in 1479 when the sum of 8 tari was disbursed by the town council for the repair of gun carriages (‘per li charretti della artiglaria’). The President of Sicily’s promise, in 1485, to send bombards, saltpetre, and sulphur shows that the local defences were still considered under-gunned. Indeed, in January 1485 we find Johannes de Nava’s ship sailing to Messina and elsewhere in Sicily in search of ‘bonbardi et altri artiglarii’ for use in the Castrum Maris.

Local demands to the Viceroy for more artillery pieces are encountered again in 1488. By 1495 there is an established presence of bombardiers – all foreigners – three to four in Mdina, two in the Gozo castrum and an unknown number at the Castrum Maris. By 1500 there was enough local expertise to enable the manufacture and refinement of gunpowder, the construction of gun

The remains of what appears to have been the Byzantine talus at the foot of the antemurale flanking Mdina's lateral enceinte (Photograph courtesy of the Superintendence of Cultural Heritage).

Punic wall, Mdina.


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carriages and the repair of cannon. The number of gunners does not seem to have increased by 1530, however, implying that the arsenal of fortress guns had changed little in quantity.

Although no inventory of the type and quality of guns from the pre-1530 period has been found to date, the severe limitations of the quality and quantity of this equipment is attested by the early Hospitaller accounts. For example, Bosio states, disparagingly, that the Castrum Maris could only boast a mezzo canone pietrero, due falconetti and some bombards.

The lack of a proper account of the nature and type of cannon employed in the three fortresses also poses a great difficulty in understanding the manner in which this equipment would have been deployed and mounted on the ramparts, and hence, indirectly, on the typology of fortress construction. Although the small artillery pieces could be easily deployed from any narrow medieval chemin-de-ronde and discharged over battlements and crenellations in the same manner of bows and crossbows of the period, the heavier pieces, the bombards and large pietriri, however required solid, stable, and spacious platforms, all shielded by parapets to protect the gunners themselves for enemy fire and bombardment.

What this meant, technically, was that by the 1470’s, and perhaps even earlier, the walls of Mdina would have had to be adapted both to be able to mount the defensive ordnance and equally important, to absorb greater punishment from enemy bombardment.

In most medieval castles, this was generally achieved by the widening and thickening of the ramparts with added layers of earth, often by back-filling of the houses lining the walls on inner side of the ramparts. Existing towers were likewise filled in with earth and transformed into solid cylindrical or rectangular bulwarks. In fact, we can catch a glimpse of this happening in Gozo, for example, when a section of wall on the

southern part of the enceinte of the castrum was dismantled and rebuilt anew, (‘alargandulu di lu antiquu pedamentu’) in an attempt to thicken the ramparts, while some form of scarpa is recorded as having been erected along the Birgu front of the Castrum Maris in 1487. It is not clear yet if similar interventions were carried out on Mdina’s medieval walls.

So far, the records are rather vague on the nature of the works undertaken in the second half of the 1400s, which usually only mention the widening and completion of the main ditch.

It is now known that by the 1400s Mdina had a system of double walls for most of its enceinte. A high inner main wall, the megateichos, and a lower outer antemurale, ( the proteichisma) a sort of faussebraye separated from the main wall to its rear by a fighting corridor, the so-called fasil. Albert Jouvin de Rochefort could still very clearly make out these double walls in 1663 and a large part of this enceinte survived well into the eighteenth century. Today, however, only a small section of this system of double walls has survived.

A portion of main inner wall, (megateichos) situated to the rear of De Redin Bastion has survived to reveal the unique remnants of two circular gun loops of the type that can be found on many castle walls dating to the second half of the 1400s. The width of the megateichos, around 3m, made it a rather narrow gunplatform and reveals that the main wall had not been thickened.

As a gun platform, these ramparts (between 9 to 10 m in height) seem to have have stood relatively high in the ground and exposed to bombardment. Indeed, the documents show that some of the guns in Mdina were mounted high on the ramparts, such that in 1522, it took a number of slaves three days to ‘xindiri l’artigliaria dili mura’ (i.e., to bring down the guns from the walls) before these could be serviced.

The recent archaeological

excavations have now also confirmed the presence of double walls on the east and west sides of the town’s enceinte, below Vilhena Palace and Xara Palace Hotel, as well as at the foot of Magazine Curtain respectively. The presence of these remains had long been suspected by the author. In his earlier research on Mdina, the present author had come across various papers by the Order’s resident French military engineer, Charles Francois de Mondion, then involved in the reconstruction of Mdina’s fortifications and the magistral palace in the early 18th century, which mentioned the presence of the remains of ancient outer walls at the foot of the ramparts, ‘... quali vestigi non solamente si vedono nel detto fondo ma anche si distendono fin quasi il posto baccar dove s’attacano con il roccame che resta scoperto sotto le mura di essa Città.’ Mondion’s report mentions that these ‘replicati vesitgi di falsabraga’ (hence antemural) also spanned all the way from below St Peter’s Bastion – then being fitted out with a low battery ─ round to the Ta’ Bacchar, or St. Mary Bastion overlooking Mtarfa.

The extensive archaeological investigations initiated by the Restoration Unit in the Works Division, Ministry for Resources and Rural Affairs in 2007, and then expanded by the Superintendence of Cultural Heritage, were instrumental in exposing the remains of a trace of outer Byzantine antemurale. This Byzantine outerwall was faced largely with re-utilized Roman blocks of hardstone and, at two points, even found to have been revetted with a masonry talus.

This Byzantine antemurale, however, was found to have been partly dismantled and replaced in one area by a sizeable semi-circular structure, revetted in smooth faced ashlar kantuni. Understandably, the discovery of the remains of the base of this large semi-circular structure, which was only hidden from view by a thin surface layer of soil, generated considerable excitement. The platform, with a diameter of


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some 12 m, was grafted onto the base of the existing main wall.

The semi-circular structure itself consists of a very tightly-packed terreplein of rubble and earth, revetted with neatly-laid courses of finely-worked medieval ashlar blocks.

A Cubete Artillero?

Initially, it was thought that the structure formed the base of some unrecorded medieval tower (all towers along the Mdina front are recorded and accounted for). However, it was soon discovered that it did not have the desired solid foundations that could have possibly enabled it to rise to any significant height so as to match the adjoining rampart, resting as it does, not on bedrock, but on a bedding of packed rubble. As a result, it soon became clear to the author that this was not the base of a tower but some sort of gun-platform that had been grafted onto the base of the main rampart walls in order to provide a flanking position along what appears to have been a towerless eastern flank of the town. From this position, the platform controlled both the approaches to the town walls from Saqqajja and an old road coming up from Ta Qali.

The semi-circular plan of the unearthed structure suggested a typology of flanking devices of the kind constructed in Spain in the latter half of the fifteenth century and known as cubete artillero (translated literally as ‘artillery barrel’). This was a sort of hollow or casemated semi-circular artillery bulwark, of small dimensions and low in height, with its walls pierced with circular gun-loops and loopholes, projecting from the foot of the rampart which it was designed to enfilade. More than a bulwark, the cubete is often described as proto-caponier as, unlike a bulwark, it projected from, and covered only, the lower part of a rampart, much in the manner of later fighting caponiers.

Well-preserved examples of a cubete artillero can be found at the north-west angle of the Alcazar Real de Carmona (Seville), the castle of Astudillo (Palencia) and at the castle of La Calahorra in Granada. The Carmona cubete is attributed to Francisco Ramirez de la Madrid, or de Oreňa, who was appointed by Queen Isabela I as ‘obrero mayor des alcazares y ataranzanas de la ciudad de Seville’ in 1478 and later as Artillero Mayor before his death in 1501. The construction of the Carmona cubete is considered to have occurred sometime between

1486-1488, and was followed by that at Astudillo some time later, and that of La Calahorra around 1509. Both the Astudillo and Calahorra cubete, provide close models for the Mdina structure.

By the late fifteenth and first decade of the sixteenth century the semi-circular/ circular type of gun-platform could be found being built across Europe and the Mediterranean. Italian engineers like Bartholino de Castiglione and Baslio della Scuola were busily working for the Hospitaller knights building semi-circular and circular artillery bulwarks at Symi and Kos (Andimacchia and Narangia) and the Bastion of Italy on the enceinte of the city of Rhodes.

The Mdina platform echoes both the typological and structural features, dimensions, and positioning, of a cubete artillero. A precise date for its construction is difficult to determine. The archaeological evidence, however, does point to the fifteenth century.

Dating the period of construction

There are two known major fortification efforts occurring during the latter half of the fifteenth century which can provide a specific context, and a possible date for the construction of Mdina’s cubete. These were the general mobilizations and extensive military preparations of the 1450s and 1580s respectively, prompted by the fear of Barbary and Turkish invasions. The episodes of the 1450s saw most of the effort directed at the widening of the land front ditch and the dismantling of the badly maintained castrum civitates, the town castle occupying the south-east angle of the enceinte. The 1450s, however, are unlikely as proving to be the period when the cubete was constructed. For one thing, there is no hint in the available documentation of the presence of guns or bombardiers at Mdina during this period to justify the construction of such a dedicated structure. It appears that Mdina had


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no gunpowder operated artillery at this time so there would have been little need for a dedicated artillery platform.

The extensive military preparations of the 1480s, on the other hand, are a different matter. By this time there is clear evidence of bombardi deployed along the walls of Mdina. Although, again, the authorities seem to be been largely concerned with ‘lu spachamento di li dicti fossi’ during this general emergency, for which a nation-wide corvèe (the angara) was organized to provide the necessary manpower, the contemporary records also mention the need for ‘altru riparu di mura’, works which could have also involved the addition of new defensive structures such as the gunplatform in question.

That modern notions of artillery defence were then beginning to seep into the minds of the local community can be easily gauged from some of the defensive provisions that were put into force on that occasion: in 1480, for example, the council of Mdina met to discuss the demolition of churches, houses, and taverns situated outside, and close to the walls of the town in order to create a clear field of fire for the town’s few cannon, and indeed a number of structures were eventually razed to the ground to this end. A similar concern would undoubtedly have been shown, at some stage, for the need to provide enfilading fire along the flanks of the town, for which some sort of projecting platforms would have been absolutely necessary given the absence of wall towers and jinks in the trace of walls along this part of the enceinte.

It is also interesting to note that the defence preparations of the 1480s were directed and guided by various experienced military men sent over from Sicily. In January 1481, the Viceroy Gaspar Despes sent over Julianus Mundo to take over the office of Captain at Arms and a few years later, in 1485, one of the two president, Johannes de Valguarnera, Baron of Asaro, himself came over to inspect the

state of the island’s defences and order ‘quillo sarra necessariu in defensioni di lo dicto regno’. In 1486, Alvarus Peres, recommended by the Castellan of the Castrum Maris Johannes de Navaz, was appointed as marammerius (overseer of works). Again in 1488, following the Turkish assault on Malta that year, the President, Julianus Centelles promised to send Mastro Portolano as Capitan d’Armi. Unfortunately, the minutes for the council meetings for the vital period from late July 1483 to October 1498, have not survived to provide any clues on the nature and type of works carried out during these important years. It was during these seminal years that many of the new concepts and ideas on gunpowder fortifications began to rapidly gain ground around the shores of the Mediterranean.

Although no particular reference to the presence of Spanish or Italian military engineers on the island throughout the period under review has yet been found, it is clear that there existed plenty of opportunities for the influx of new concepts of gunpowder fortification to filter into the Maltese milieu in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries from both Sicily and Spain, through both military and political channels. The discovery of the remains of a cubete-style of structure at Mdina shows that the degree of influence and assistance from Spanish fortification experts in the late fifteenth century was indeed

significant. Why this awareness did not

eventually translate itself into more modern gunpowder bastions and defences, such as the veritable polygonal bastions erected alla moderna by the Spaniards at the citadel of Tripoli after its capture in 1510, is difficult to explain given the positioning of the Maltese islands in Fronteria Barbarorum. A primary reason would surely have been the lack of local financial resources. The cubete was a relatively small structure and the expenses of its construction would have been absorbed, albeit with some difficulty,

by the local authorities through taxation but the construction of the much larger and increasingly complex bastions of the sixteenth century would have required more substantial resources and expertise which neither the Maltese nor Gozitan Universitas could have mustered on their own accord without direct Imperial assistance.

Full references, notes, and sources will be published in a book currently under preparation on the Fortifications and Military Organization in Late Medieval Malta by the author.

Acknowledgements: Restoration Unit, Works Division, MRRA, and the Superintendence of Cultural Heritage

The cubete artillero at the castle of

Calahorra.


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Caponier unearthed in ditch of Vittoriosa Fortifications

Dr Stehen C Spiteri Ph.D.

The preparatory archaeological investigations on the historic fortifications undertaken prior to the commencement of the ERDF restoration interventions by the Restoration Directorate have brought back to light important elements of Malta’s military architecture that have been virtually unknown. After the important discoveries of the Punic and late-medieval ramparts at Mdina, and the uncovering of an unrecorded piazza bassa in the flank of St Michael Demi-Bastion, in Valletta, the Restoration Unit has now unearthed a unique stretch of eighteenth-century outerwork defences in the ditch of the Birgu fortifications.

These latest discoveries consist of a combined caponier and tenaille, both fitted with masonry banquettes (firing steps) and an earthen glacis. These fortifications were part of the important outerworks designed and built by the French military engineer Charles Francois de Mondion as part of the significant remodelling of the Birgu land front fortifications in the early eighteenth century. Completed around 1728, these works were intended to give the defenders of Birgu the ability to sally-out of the fortress walls and reach the outer defences on the far side of the ditch in relative safety, protected from enemy musket fire and ricocheting cannon balls.

This page, views of the unearthed caponier found in

Birgu's main ditch, showing the masonty parapet and the two-

stepped banquette. Note the culvert for the insertion of the

wooden palisades.


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Birgu is Malta’s first maritime fortified city and one of the few sixteenth-century fortresses to have successfully withstood the might of an Ottoman siege (hence its title of ‘Vittoriosa’). Its ramparts and fortifications document a unique fusion of sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth century forms of military architecture, that together display powerful architectural and sculptural qualities.

Although later enclosed within the larger enceintes of the Cottonera and the Firenzuola lines, the Order’s engineers continued to invest heavily in the re-fortification of Birgu, fitting it out with all the adjuncts of defence that eighteenth-century French military architecture could offer.

Amongst the fortifications added to old enceinte was a new system of outerworks, including the caponiers and tenailles recently unearthed within the ditch.

Caponiers of communication

By the end of the eighteenth century, most of the ditches of the knights’ major forts and fortresses had been fitted with caponiers following the French pattern. Unfortunately, however, only a handful of such devices have survived. The only known examples prior to this latest discovery were those at Fort Manoel (three) and Fort Ricasoli (two - the latter, however, were roofed over by the British military and fitted with musketry loopholes). The Fort Manoel examples were excavated in rock.

The caponier found in the Birgu ditch, on the other hand, is a built-up structure and the only example of its kind. It consists of two sets of stepped masonry banquettes, roughly two metres wide, separated from one another by a sunken passageway. Each arm of the

caponier is served by a two-stepped masonry banquette, about 2m metres wide and built solidly enough to mount small grenade-throwing mortars. A continuous culvert at the foot of the parapets all along the length of the banquettes also shows that this caponier was fitted with wooden palisades.

It had become the practice, by the eighteenth century, to provide added protection to such outerworks by fitting them with wooden

Author's drawing showing the method of construction of

Birgu's caponier.


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Author's graphic reconstruction of the Brigu land front and its outerworks,

showing the caponier inside the ditch. (3D computer model).

caponier

sally-port

sally-port

St John Bastion

place-of-arms (built over)

covertway

caponier

St James Bastion


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palisades, a kind of continuous fence made of pointed stakes joined together by timber cross-pieces. In simple terms, these palisades were the eighteenth-century equivalent of modern barbed wire entanglements.

Such palisades were generally planted into the ground in prepared slots around 12-inches distant from the foot of the parapet (see diagram). Since wooden palisades were costly and liable to decay, much care was taken to ensure their longevity.

In general, palisades were only set up and deployed around a fortress in the event of an

emergency, for in times of relative peace, they were kept safely stored inside dry and damp-free magazines.

It was the chance discovery of a plan of the Birgu fortifications some years ago that alerted the Restoration Unit team to presence of this caponier and tenaille. Since no trace or evidence of either the caponier or tenaille could be observed on site it was feared that these elements had been swept away in the course of the early twentieth century when the ditch was converted into a public garden and planted over with trees. None

of the local residents, as a matter of fact, had any knowledge of the buried fortifications.

It was, therefore, necessary to investigate the site archaeologically and to this end, the Restoration Unit began excavating a small trial pit approximately in the location where the caponier was indicated on plan. These investigations were carried out with the authority of the Superintendence of Cultural Heritage. Immediately the first shovels hit the soil, they uncovered the crest of a parapet followed by the well-preserved remains of a two-stepped masonry banquette.

As a result, the trial trench was then extended further along other sections of the ditch and it soon became clear that the whole system of caponier and tenaille had not been swept away as feared but were still buried beneath the soil, largely intact.

The discovery of these fortifications, inevitably, generated considerable excitement all round since, once restored and interpreted, these unearthed elements will help make the system of fortifications in Birgu all the more fascinating to explore and discover.


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Section through the thickness of the redan wall where the gateway into St. Anthony Battery stood prior to its collapse. (Image source: Author’s collection).


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Din L-Art Helwa, Malta’s voluntary heritage organization, and the Local Council of Qala are collaborating in a joint effort aimed at restoring St. Anthony Battery at Ras il-Qala, in the island of Gozo. This structure, one of the few remaining eighteenth-century coastal works of fortification erected by the Knights of St John to have survived down to the present day, has long been in need of a serious rescue intervention. The two organizations have been campaigning hard over the past years both to have the battery returned to the public domain and also to muster the necessary resources with which to undertake the desired restoration works.

Built in 1731-32 by Grand Master Antonio Manoel de Vilhena, the Qala Battery (known locally as ‘Ta’ Sant’ Antnin’ or simply ‘it-Trunciera’) is actually one of only two coastal batteries from the Hospitaller period to have survived in Gozo (the other is situated at Il-Qbajjar, outside Marsalforn) and one of only a handful still to be seen in a relatively unadulterated form throughout the whole of the Maltese archipelago. Despite its heavily battered state of preservation, St. Anthony Battery has nonetheless retained most its authentic and unique features as well as its original relationship with the surrounding landscape and the sea, given that the site on which it stands at the western-most tip of the island (one of the remotest spots on Gozo) has remained practically

unchanged and devoid of any modern developments since this work of fortification was first erected in 1732.

Historical Context and Signifiance

By the early decades of the eighteenth century, coastal fortification had become an indispensable component of the Order’s strategy for the defence of their island-realm. The initially early-warning scheme of coastal towers and watchposts which fulfilled this role throughout the seventeenth century was replaced, by the beginning of the settecento, by a more aggressive and wider network of fortified defensive positions – gun batteries, redoubts, and entrenchments – all designed

to serve as physical obstacles to invasion. The most critical elements in this active defensive scheme were, undoubtedly, the coastal batteries, or gun-platforms, designed to mount the heavy cannon necessary to fire on, and keep at bay, approaching enemy ships intent on disembarking their cargo of invading troops.

Although many of the batteries which took root around the islands’ shores materialized in the years 1715–16, the initial idea for these French-style coastal defences had been first mooted in 1714 by the Commissioners of Fortifications, Jacques de Camus d’Arginy and Bernard de Fontet and a French secondary engineer by the name of François Bachelieu. This coastal defence strategy then found a great exponent in the Prior of France, the Balì de Vendôme, and it was mainly through his insistence, and a generous loan of 40,000 scudi which he presented to the Order, that the construction of the network of batteries and redoubts was able to materialize.

Even though greatly ambitious in its intent and scope, the 1715-16 scheme of coastal defences had, nonetheless, omitted many strategic places around the islands’ shores – undefended areas which soon came to be viewed by military strategists as the Achilles’ heel of the whole coastal defence master plan. Among those places left out were Delimara Point, Tombrell, Mistra Bay, Mgarr

Restoration of St Anthony Battery at Ras il-Qala, Gozo

Dr Stephen C Spiteri Ph.D.


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harbour, and Ras il-Qala in Gozo. All these locations would eventually be fitted out with some sort of defensive structure in the course of the eighteenth century, some as late as the 1790s, but even so there still remained many areas which were never addressed. The first to draw attention, however, owing to its great strategic importance, was Qala Point, since the position enabled the local militia to command the entrance to the channel between Gozo and the island of Comino, a coastal passage which led directly towards the important harbour of Mgarr.

It would appear that the first proposal for the fortification of the Qala location was put forward in 1730 and the work on the battery, named St. Anthony Battery in

honour of the then-reigning Grand Master, Antoine Manoel de Vilhena (reigned 1722-36), who had offered to build it his own expense, was began in 1731 and brought to completion in the following year, as recorded by the date and inscription which once stood above the small main gate into the fort. This is also confirmed by the following extract taken from the Recapitalazione delle opera di fortificationi fatte nelle isole di Malta et Gozo dall’anno 1722 fin all’anno 1732, which records that in 1731 ‘… furono fabricate e stabilite due nuove batterie al Gozo …. una di dieci pezzi di cannone, sulla punta chiamata della Cala, quale non solo diffende la costa vicina, ma anche potra’ impedire i bastimenti nemici d’accostare nel canale o’ ristretto di mare fra detta isola e quella del Comino. Questa Batteria assicurata con un fosso, ha nell’ interiore gli allogiamenti necessarij con cisterna’. The second battery was erected ‘in mezzo spiaggia della Ramla’. The 1715 list of coastal fortification works, however, already records a redoubt in the middle of Ramla bay, flanked by two batteries, built for the cost of 840 scudi. It is not clear, therefore, where the 1731 battery was located exactly. An undated plan of the defences of Ramla Bay shows both 1715 Batteries, and the 1715 redoubt in the middle of the bay, linked together by a neauvoux retrenchemens which also contains a pentagonal shaped projection that may, in fact, be the 1731 battery mentioned above.

The major structural work on St Anthony Battery seems to have been completed by early December of 1732 as evidenced by the fact that the remaining surplus quantities of pozzlana (a type of volcanic ash used in the mixture of lime mortar) were removed from the battery on 28 December 1732, and transported back to the Gozo citadel, a task which cost the Governor of Gozo 8 tari ( ‘per trasporto della puzzolana avvanzata in detto fortino, nel Castello’). Many of the finishing touches, however, were still under way during 1733 and continued as late as April 1734 when the

escutcheons on the main gate were finally carved out. In August 1733, the master carpenter Antonio Mallia and the master blacksmith Saverio Dimech received payment for the manufacture and fitting of the doors and windows of the blockhouse while towards the end of that year Mastri Ferdinando Vella and Domenico Bigeni were paid for other unspecified works carried out at the battery. By this time, the battery was already in need of some repairs. Two large stones supporting the drawbridge had to be replaced, for the cost of 1 scudo, after being damaged during the transportation of the heavy cannon into the battery on 20 December 1732 (‘per rimetter due ballate al ponte di detta batteria (qala) quail furon rotte quando vi si trasporto l’artigliaria). The roof of the block house had to be repaired twice, in February and September 1733 respectively.

Shape and Form

The Ras il-Qala battery was one of the largest coastal batteries constructed locally in terms of its typology and dimensions. Its design is also unique in many ways. To begin with, its polygonal plan departed from the standard semi-circular configuration which was nearly universally applied to most coastal batteries of the time, particularly those erected by the knights during the course of the 1700s. The platform has a demi-hexagonal plan with a large musketry wall and triangular redan closing off the gorge, complemented by a sizeable centrally-placed blockhouse occupying the rear of the platform. The design of the battery is attributed to the resident military engineer, the Frenchman Charles Francois de Mondion, which would make it one of his last works, given that he died in 1733. As resident military engineer, Mondion would have been responsible for all new works of fortification but the construction works would have been supervised by his assistant, the Italian second engineer Francesco Marandon, who would later go on

Record plan purporting to show St Anthony Battery at Ras el Cala as built in 1732. The drawing itself is undated. The only feature that corresponds to the present battery is the sloping nature of the site and the redan, which, however, also has one musketry loophole less on its right face. The plan may actually have been wrongly labelled and could have been meant to show one of the other semi-circular coastal batteries built around the shores of Malta. See text for further details. (Illustration, courtesy of the National Library of Malta).


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to become the resident military engineer in his own right and see to the construction of the large fortress on Ras-e-tafal (Fort Chambrai) in 1749.

The initial design of the Ras il-Qala Battery, however, is something of a mystery for the only existing plan of the work to survive shows a totally different battery than the one now standing on site. This plan, entitled Batteria Sant Antonio fabbricata nel 1732 sulla punta Ras el Cala dell’Isla del Gozo shows a battery built on a heavily sloping terrain and constructed in the manner of the other coastal batteries erected around the shores of Malta in 1715-16 such as Ghzira Battery, Elmniech Battery, Ferretti Battery, etc., that is, with a semi-circular battery platform and a gorge closed off by a system of two blockhouses linked by a redan. In other words, totally unrelated to the present structure.

There are various possible explanations for this curious discrepancy. The simplest and most obvious being that the plan may have been wrongly labelled by the draughtsman responsible for executing the finished drawing and may actually be showing one of the other coastal batteries. By this period in the Order’s history, the office of the resident military engineer employed a number of draughtsmen and surveyors who were tasked, amongst many other things, with preparing presentation and record copies of plans of the various defences. With so many works of fortifications underway in the mid-eighteenth century, such a mistake would have been more than possible. An alternative explanation is that the design of the battery was altered and rebuilt at some later stage. However, the plan is what would be described as a record plan, showing the structure ‘as built’ and not as proposed. The Ricapitalazione of 1743 states clearly that it was completed in 1732 and fitted out with allogiamenti. An entry in one of the Order’s records, listing repair works carried out in 1733, does speak of ‘due

terrazze …della batteria’, implying two rather than one blockhouse. However, one has to keep in mind that the blockhouse had three large rooms, each with its own terrazzo, so this entry does not necessarily mean that the battery had two blockhouses.

A careful examination of the site does not reveal any physical evidence for a major rebuilding programme that such a significant reconstruction would have entailed. A more plausible explanation, therefore, may be that the design of the battery was actually revised and altered half way through the construction of the work. Indeed, a close examination of the battery’s

masonry fabric does reveal two distinct building styles. The first, reserved solely for the redan and the musketry loopholed wall, involved small masonry blocks placed in 28cm-high courses. The second – involving the rest of the enceinte of the battery, i.e., its flanks and faces, and parapets – is built with large rusticated blocks laid in the 41-cm course, the standard building block for most defensive works. The tell-tale sign for the two distinct phases comes from the rough manner in which the two different masonry skins were crudely brought together and grafted at the junction of the wings of the musketry wall and the flanks. Further study and research,

View of the redan, demolished gateway, and adjoining wings prior to restoration. (Image source: Author’s collection).

Interior view of the redan, prior to restoration. (Image source: Author’s collection).


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however, are required here before the matter can be satisfactorily resolved.

The Anatomy of St Anthony Battery

Despite its unique plan, the Ras il-qala Battery still conforms to the basic arrangement of most coastal outposts, in that it comprised three main components - the battery platform, a defensive redan, and a blockhouse to shelter men and supplies.

Undeniably, St Anthony Battery’s most impressive architectural feature is the redan. This V-shaped projection and its lateral wings, served internally by a solid banquette, were heavily pierced with twenty-four musketry loopholes. Unfortunately, a large part of this defensive wall (with many of its loopholes) had been demolished (largely by vandals) and has to be rebuilt. The restorers are being careful to re-utilize many of the original hardstone blocks and lintels from the original structure which still litter the site.

The restored product will surely be an impressive defensive architectural feature which is not found anywhere else around the shores of the Maltese islands. Slightly similar, though less impressive redan-and-blockhouse arrangements can still be found at Qawra Point Battery (unfortunately, here these features have been rendered illegible and obscured by modern accretions and layers of cement), Mistra Battery, and at Ferretti Battery in Marsaxlokk (recently restored). The only other large concentration of Hospitaller-period musketry loopholes to provide the same sense of defensive fire-power can be found in the two-tiered arrangement of the tour-reduit (keep) at Fort Tigné, built in the 1790s.

An interesting and unique feature in the design of St. Anthony Battery is the manner by which the side walls, or wings of the redan, were reinforced and transformed into

Author's graphic reconstruction of St. Anthony Battery (3D computer model).


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veritable traverses. These side walls (the so-called ‘muro per impedire la vista dalla parte di terra’ found in many forms in various batteries and redoubts) were built to shield the interior of the battery as well as to intercept and absorb any incoming shots fired by enemy cannon seeking to enfilade the battery either from the higher ground to the rear of the work or from ships approaching along the coast.

The battery contains eleven large embrasures separated by thick merlons built along the common ‘gabion’ principle found in most Hospitaller works, that is, consisting of a thin masonry shell

filled in with a packing of rubble and earth, bound together with a soil mortar. Unlike in most other parapets, the superior slopes of the merlons at Qala battery were not capped with masonry flagstones but covered with a thin layer of deffun and lime mortar (a cement-like mixture which had water-proofing qualities). Most of this covering has disappeared leaving only a few traces of the original application and an exposed infil that now needs to be resurfaced and sealed off to prevent the seepage of water into the interior of the structure. This covering layer was first applied more than a decade after the construction

of the battery, for an inspection of the site carried out by the resident military engineer, Francesco Maradon, in 1749 records that the merlons were still incomplete (in the sense that these were uncovered). Marandon went on to recommend that the remblai inside the merlons be levelled out and paved with capstones. This intervention, however, was never carried out and the superior slope was covered with a layer of deffun instead, perhaps for want of money.

The guns behind the parapet were served by a thick continuous platform of tal-qawwi flagstones, slightly inclined towards the parapet. This allowed the cannon to be easily manhandled and moved from one embrasure to another all round the perimeter of the battery platform as the tactical situation dictated. A culvert situated in one of the embrasures ensured that the platform was quickly drained from any rainwater accumulating inside the battery. The battery was also served by a small cistern, which was situated next to the central blockhouse.

The Gateway

The left-face of the redan contained the main entrance into the battery – an arched opening cut into the wall and crowned by a semi-circular pediment decorated with two escutcheons. The two shields bore the ensign of the Order (a plain Latin cross) and the coat of arms of Grand Master Vilhena. A short inscription, surmounted by the date 1732, commemorated the building of the battery during the governorship of the knight Fra Paolo Antonio de Viguier, who was in charge of the island in 1732-24. The inscription, carved in stone, reads ‘NEL GOVERNO DEL CAV FRA PAOLO ANTONIO DE VIGUIER’. The coat of arms were carved out by the Maltese scalpellino Mastro Carlo Fabri who was sent to Gozo, together with his assistant, on 15 April 1734 to execute the work. The task, which was completed by the 27 April, cost the total sum of 23


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on the site and will undoubtedly be re-utilised in the reconstruction of the archway. The gateway itself, which would have been fitted with a wooden door, seems to have been served by a small drawbridge. A few rectangular cuttings along the crest of the rock-hewn counterscarp suggests that a wooden palisaded gate (such as that suggested in the reconstructed 3D model reproduced here) was used to control access to the drawbridge.

Rediscovering the Blockhouse

An important aspect of the present restoration intervention is that it has helped to determine, once and for all, the true layout and shape of the demolished blockhouse. The restoration works provided the opportunity to clear the ruins of the rubble stone and debris and this in turn has allowed the restorers to expose the remains of the lower courses and foundations of the

scudi 5 tari and 7 grani, inclusive of the sculptur’s return fare (4 tari) to Malta. This would probably mean that the escutcheons were carved in situ, with the unworked blocks themselves already forming part of the gateway panoply – a common practice at the time.

There are many surviving examples of unworked rectangular escutcheon blocks fitted to the facades of buildings and fortifications (example Mgarr ix-Xini Tower, the Cavalier of Fort St Angelo etc) which remained uncarved. The carving of the blocks in situ would have required some sort of scaffolding to be erected and, indeed, we find that the sum of 8 tari was disbursed on the transportation, to and from the battery, of ‘gli legni e altre cose necessarie al scultore’.

The arched opening itself, unfortunately, fell down a few years ago in the course of a violent storm but, thankfully, the structure had been well documented photographically by various individuals, including photographs rwhich were taken by the present author around 1991.

A few of the carved blocks which formed part of the panoply have been identified among the rubble


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original building. This has revealed a large rectangular structure divided into three rooms. Each room was provided with a relatively large doorway, most probably arched, which opened frontally onto the gun-platform. The rear wall, facing the redan, on the other hand was pierced by windows, except for the central room, the smallest of the three, which was also accessed by a rear doorway. One of the three rooms is known to have served as the Santa Barbara (i.e, artillery magazine and powder store).

The unearthed evidence has shown that the layout of the blockhouse, unlike that adopted in all the other blockhouses erected in the earlier 1715-16 coastal batteries, employed roof-supporting arches which were not placed transversely to the line of the façades, but, discharged their weight laterally instead. In the absence of any original plans of the building, this structural feature could only be determined once the dimensions of the individual rooms were revealed with the removal of the rubble heap and debris covering the remains of the blockhouse. This observation was then also supported by the remains of the surviving sloping northern side-wall, which on closer and more detailed examination, revealed that this was actually a lateral buttress that had been grafted onto the original side wall - evidently an attempt to counter a lateral movement created in the side wall by the weight of the arches.

It is not known at what stage it was found necessary to prop up the northern side wall with this delfin or contraforte (as these buttresses were then often called), but the masonry itself seems to suggest a date sometime during the Hospitaller period, rather than the early decades of the British rule over the island. No information in the Order’s records has been traced to-date that hints at any repair works carried out to the blockhouse other than those mentioned above, which refer to the roof. Initially, and up until the commencement of the present restoration works, this remnant of a


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sloping wall was thought to form part of the original shape of the structure, but on more detailed and closer examination, made possible only by the removal of the mound of debris, this view has had to change. In fact, no remains of a similar sloping wall were found at the base of the remains of the opposite lateral wall on the south side of the structure.

The roofing of the blockhouse seems to have been a constant source of concern. Its maintenance, which as shown above, was already on the agenda as early as 1733, continues to feature in many of the later reports. Marandon’s inspection of 1749, for example, underlined the need for the plastering and pointing of the roof and the cracks therein and the laying of six new water drainage pipes to channel the water away, and more efficiently, from the roof of the blockhouse and down into the cistern.

The Battery Walls - Rustication Techniques

A look at outer revetments of the battery walls along five of the main faces shows these to have been constructed of drafted masonry in an attempt to create a rusticated texture, a common finishing technique employed in most of the small coastal works of fortification built by the knights in the eighteenth century, including the much larger


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Fort Tigné. A closer examination of the

battery’s outer walls, however, shows that rather than being constructed throughout of drafted and embossed masonry, the rusticated blocks of stone were randomly interspersed among other ordinary smooth-faced ashlar blocks, including blocks of soft stone. This tends to imply that builders had both a limited supply of rusticated masonry and that they made use of different sources for their supply of materials. This was a common practice in Hospitaller times, particularly in the late1700s. The Order’s records reveal that stone required for the building of a work of fortification often came from pre-existing stocks of masonry (‘buona provisione anticipate)’ and at times, was even cannibalized from other buildings. Most of the stonework at Qala consists of hardstone blocks, intermixed with the occasional softer blocks of Globigerina. The rocky terrain in the vicinity of the battery provides ample evidence for surface quarrying, most of which would have provided the larger part of the hardstone employed in the construction of the work.

Armament and equipment

Initially, it was intended to arm the battery with a good number of heavy guns, including among others, two 36-pounders (then

amongst the heaviest pieces in the Order’s arsenal), together with other 24-pounders. Indeed, the ammunition for these guns had already been transported and deposited inside the battery by the end of 1731 when it was suddenly decided to arm the battery with guns of a smaller calibre. In December 1732, the extra sum of 9 scudi had, as a result, to be incurred ‘per portare palle di ferro nella batteria di Ras il Cala in lugo di quelle divenute inutile allorche furono mutate i cannoni’.

For most of its history, Qala Battery was to have an armament of eight guns. By 1785, these included five 8-pounder iron cannon with 420 rounds of roundshot and 58 rounds of grapeshot; and three 6-pounder guns with 175 rounds of roundshot and 61 rounds of grapeshot. The importance of the battery can be gauged by the fact that it was one of the few coastal works to have held its own supply of gunpowder permanently on site; which in turn also meant that the outpost was manned round the clock, all year round.

An inventory of the equipment inside the battery, compiled by the out-going commander of artillery, the knight Fra Giovanni Francesco de St. Felix, lists the armaments, munitions, tools, and equipment as found in 1785 (see table on previous page)

Din l-Art Helwa

The restoration of St Anthony Battery is not the only restoration project undertaken by Din L-Art Helwa. Another important coastal

battery restored by Din l-Art helwa is Sta. Maria Battery on the nearby island of Comino (a special feature on this battery with 3D computer graphics is currently being prepared by MilitaryArchitecture.com). Din l-Art Helwa has also salvaged the nearby Sta Maria Tower (already featured – see http://www.militaryarchitecture.com/index.php/Fortifications/sta-maria-tower-on-comino.html ) and the Hospitaller towers at Nadur (Torri Sopu), Dwejra, Mellieha (Torre Rossa), Ghallis, Qalet Marku, and St Paul’s Bay, and Torre Mamo in M’Scala.

At Ras il-Qala, however, the logistical problems alone, posed by the remoteness of the location and the difficulty of vehicular access to the site were one of the many challenges that had to be, and were, overcome by Din L-Art Helwa and its team of restorers. MilitaryArchitecture.com takes this opportunity to congratulate Din L-Art Helwa and the Qala Local Council, and all those involved in this restoration project for their noteworthy contribution towards the preservation of yet another important historical asset, and looks forward to the final completion of works and to eventual opening up of the battery to the public, Maltese and foreign visitors alike, so that it can be appreciated and admired for its interesting features.

Below, view of St. Anthony Battery prior to restoration.(image source: Author's collection). Opposite page, Restoration works in progress. The side wall shown in the photograph (centre) is actually the delfin, or counterfort, which was built to provide lateral buttressing to the structure and was the only part of the blockhouse to have remained standing. (Image source: courtesy of Col. Eric Parnis, DLH).


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Although largely famous today for its role as a Templar fortress during the time of the Crusades, Tartous had been equally renowned in antiquity for its strategic and military importance. Tartous was originally founded by the Phoenicians to complement the more secure but the less accessible settlement on the island of Arwad. For a long time it served a secondary role to Arwad, itself a major centre in Seleucid and Roman times. As a matter fact its classical name of Ataradus (meaning ‘anti-Aradus’ or ‘the town facing Aradus’ or Arwad) reflected this secondary role. Tartous underwent a major programme of rebuilding in 346 under the Byzantine Emperor Constantine, probably because it housed an important ancient shrine dedicated to the Virgin Mary. It was for a while consequently renamed Constantia, although it soon reverted to its ancient name or Tartous. It is under this name -or its Latinized form of Tortosa- that it became famous in Crusader times as one of the main Frankish littoral settlements in Syria, perhaps more importantly as the headquarters of the Templar knights. These warrior monks, known simply as Templars, were a religious military order of knighthood which came into being in the early decades of the twelfth century and rapidly grew into a powerful military force playing a major role in the

The Templar Fortress of Tartous, Syria

Arch. Zeina el-Cheikh

defence of the Christian conquests in the Latin East and the protection of Christian pilgrims to the Holy Land. In Christian hands the fortress was a very important and strategic outpost located close to the ‘Gate of Homs’ (in Arabic Nahr el-Kebir) a large gap in the formidable mountain ranges that stand behind the coastal strip and which allowed access to the valley of the Orontes River and to important towns of Homs and Hama. For this reason Tortosa was not only an important military foothold on the shores of sea but also a useful commercial centre especially for Genoese and Venetian merchants.The fortress was first captured from the Saracens in 968 by the Byzantine Emperor Nicephorus Phocas, and in 1099 it was seized by the Crusader army on its way to Jerusalem. This initial Frankish occupation, however, was short-lived since the fortress

was immediately recaptured by the Arabs wh held it tenuously until its recapture three years later by Raymond de Saint Gilles who left it in 1105 to his son Alfonso Jordan and became a fiefdom of the County of Tripoli. Under the Crusaders Tortosa became famous as a pilgrimage centre to the sanctuary of the virgin, around which was built a new cathedral in the middle of the thirteenth century, which remained almost continuously in Crusaders hands until their final eviction from the Levantine mainland in 1291.

Tartus was briefly occupied by by Nur ad-Din, Atabeg of Aleppo, in 1152,but after the city was recaptured by the Counts of Tripoli, it was handed over to the Knights Templars, who in a few years built a citadel near the harbour and refortified the whole town with strong walls. The real threat to the safety of the Templar fortress came with


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Saladin, who attacked the fortress in 1188, and managed to capture nearly the entire town including the cathedral.

The Templar knights, however, managed to just hold on in single heavily fortified tower, from where they were eventually able to retake the rest of the town. After the final loss of Tartous in 1291, the Crusaders were never able to re-establish a foothold on the mainland again. They managed to hold out on Arwad for a further eleven years until 1302, taking the celebrated image of the Virgin Mary with them from the Cathedral, and re-occupied Arwad briefly in 1518. Arwad, therefore, is the Crusaders’ last stand in the Near East. The original Crusader fortifications consisted of the city walls the harbor walls and the citadel. The later stands at the north-western corner of the walled town overlooking the sea. On the landward side it heavily protected by a triple line of defenses consisting of an outer curtain wall, a ditch, and an inner wall reinforced with rectangular towers. The heavily defended entrance is on the north side protected by a large square tower in the outer wall. Immediately inside the inner wall is the great hall, though completely built over by modern houses, with a small chapel adjacent. Over by the sea very badly ruined remains of the great donjon, or keep, from where the knights withstood Saladin’s siege in 1188. Massive vaulted undercrofts can still be seen; though above them modern housing has all but obscured the keep. On the seaward side can still be seen the postern gate from which the last of the Knights Templar escaped to Arwad and Cyprus in 1291. Except from Athlit (the last remnant of the Jerusalem Kingdom evacuated on 14 August), Tortosa was the last point on the mainland held by the Crusaders.

Right. Various views of the surviving ramparts of the remaining inner de-fensive wall of the Templar citadel. (Picture source: private collection of Arch. Zeina el-Cheikh).


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In the middle of the town the Cathedral of Our Lady of Tortosa is preserved virtually intact. The site was already a famous centre of pilgrimage in the Byzantine period, and several fragments of Byzantine masonry have been found re-used in its construction. As it stands, however, it is a remarkable example of French early Gothic architecture, with its façade almost exactly as the Crusaders would have left it. The altar of the chapel is believed to have miraculously escaped destruction by an earthquake in 487. An icon, said to have been painted by the evangelist St. Luke, was also venerated there. In 1841, the Cathedral was used as mosque and a minaret was built in its North-West corner. In 1922, it was registered in the Syrian antiquities, then converted in 1956 into the Lattakia and Tartous Museum. And until now it is the museum of Tartous.

Military architecture of Tartous Citadel

As their principal military base in the north, the Templars fortified the citadel heavily with a double enceinte in the form of a quarter circle strengthened by fosses, and a colossal donjon. The fortress city formed a large, irregular rectangle,

its length 350m parallel to the sea. The outer (town) wall can be seen along the street which leads from the northwestern tower inland towards the modern main street. The point where it reached the sea and turned back northwards along the coast is marked by the remains of a tower seen along the seafront about 300m south of the citadel. The walls were 2.5m thick in parts and were surrounded by a rock-cut ditch filled with sea water. Baron Emmanuel Guillaume Rey (a French aristocrat who took a passionate interest in the Crusaders) follows this introduction with a more detailed description of the identifiable remains of the main fortifications including the Templars’ great Hall “la grande salle” ,characterized as a European importation to the Near East. It was a vaulted room 44m long with six bays organized as paired aisles. In the northwestern segment of this outer compound were two inner defense walls roughly semi-circular in shape and behind them in the inner citadel.

At the heart lay the donjon where the Templars held out against Saladin. The concentric defenses thus consisted of: - Outer ditch and town wall, - Inner ditch and concentric defense walls around citadel, - Main citadel wall (almost half-circular in plan) with square bastions, - Central donjon On the north side of the square within the old city of Tarous, lies the 13th

century great hall, 44m long. The south wall is incorporated into later housing; the north wall forms part of the fortification walls. The hall was on the upper floor; the ground floor being divided by a central row of five pillars into two naves vaulted in six sections. The chapel is a little more easily identified to the northeast, behind a reconstructed doorway up a short flight of stairs. The single-naved structure is windowless on the east side which is up against the

inner fortified wall. The remains of the original (only the ground floor survives) adjoin the square on the west side.

The great bastion in fact comprised two thicknesses of concentric square fortifications. The original kernel (pre-Templar) was later duplicated by a second equally stout-walled outer layer with a greater number of firing points except on the western side where it faced the sea. To the north, stands a recognizable gateway on the northern edge of the semi-circular walls. A mosque, standing a little to the east, was installed in a former tower of the Crusader castle.

The western face of the donjon survives, indented between two stout bastions. The three doors on the lower face of the donjon allowed direct access to vessels berthed by the quay. This is from where the last of the Crusaders, in 1291, escaped the Muslim besiegers, quietly abandoning one of the last

The Cathedral of Tartous (now a museum) with plan by Rey in 1871 .


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vestiges of their 200- year adventure on the Levantine coast. The donjon which was the strongest element of the fortress is nowadays only a fragmented remnant that survives interwoven into the fabric of later buildings.

The nearby castle chapel is only briefly described as having four bays and no apse. The style of both the Templars hall and the chapel was seen as quite elegant, with the use of marble capitals and archivolts that were decorated with interlaced arabesques, suggesting Byzantine influence to Rey.

Urban and architectural evolution of Tartous Citadel and its surroundings

Tartous Citadel (well-known now as the Old City of Tartous) remains today the only clear historical centre, and its main architectural features belong to two periods: the Late Ottoman and the French Mandate (between the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century). “The influence of Occidental architecture is very sensible in the plans of

the Turkish houses since the 19th century. In fact, since 1839, in favor of the Tanzimat or new order.”. The declaration of the Tanzimat reform (in Turkish: Reorganization) as series of reforms promulgated in the Ottoman Empire between 1839 and 1876 under the reigns of the sultans Abdulmecid I and Abdulaziz. These reforms, heavily influenced by European ideas, were intended to effect a fundamental change in the empire from the old system based on theocratic principles to those of a modern state, and to modernize society along secular and bureaucratic lines. It was at the same time a moment of change in architecture in the Ottoman building code. Social transformation was expressed in architecture; feudal and wealthy families formed a social class and used the Central Hall House (three arched often) in many parts in the Old City to show off their social and financial standing.

Later on, a new building code was adopted and known as the 1930’s building system, which was adopted upon the Prime Minister’s decision No. 2390 issued on the 1st of September 1930: “Since the present laws are inadequate concerning those which deal with the building construction’ rules in the cities either from the hygienic or the aesthetical sides, or those which provide convenience and

comfort, it became necessary to put a decision which deals with building construction and streets to be applied in the municipalities of the Syrian State” (Elena Invernizzi).

Bibliography: R. Burns, The Monuments of Syria, a guide. W. Ball: Syria, a historical and architectural guide. E. Invernizzi, Tartus between archaeology and modernity: Observation on the urban evolution, in "Tartous" joint publication among the Municipalities of Alicante and Palma (Spain), and Tartous. J. Folds, Reflections on the historiography of the art of the crusaders in the thirteenth century. Crusader Art in the Holy Land, from the Third Crusade to the Fall of Acre 1187-1291. Cambridge University Press. Z. El-Cheikh, "A view on the architecture of the Old City of Tartous: in the late Ottoman and the French mandate periods", Villes et Territoires du Moyen-Orient (VTMO) May 2009, http://www.vtmo.info/?p=242

Photo creditsSome of the illustrations are \taken from "Tartous", joint publication produced by the Municipalities of Alicante and Palma (Spain), and Tartous, and from the private collection of Eng. Ali Souriti/Tartous.

Photograph showing the road leading to Tartous Citadel taken at the end of the 19th century. (Picture source: private collection of Eng. Ali Souriti)


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The bays, inlets, and coves in the southern part of the Malta were always a source of concern for the knights of St. John. These large anchorages provided secure landing places for invading enemy forces as well as an open back door leading directly into the heart of the island and its fortified harbour core. The Ottoman invasion of Malta in 1565 had shown quite clearly how the then-unprotected Marsaxlokk Bay could easily accommodate the disembarkation of the whole Turkish armada which then went on to lay siege to the Order’s strongholds inside the Grand Harbour. Equally worrying were the opportunities provided by the smaller creek at Wied il-Ghajn and the bay at San Tumas, some two to three kilometres further to the north. The vulnerability of St. Thomas Bay, in particular, was well demonstrated during the course of a swift Turkish razzia in 1614. On this occasion, a large Turkish raiding force of some sixty vessels under the command of Khalil Pasha, after a failed attempted landing inside Marsaxlokk Bay, where it was repulsed by the guns of the newly-built St. Lucian Tower, put ashore 5,000 men in the then still-unguarded St. Thomas Bay, ravaging various villages in the south of the island before being compelled to withdraw by a strong militia force sent out to confront it.

Alarmed by the ease with which the Turkish force was able to land in

the area and lay waste to the rural settlements and countryside in the south of the island, the knights were compelled to fortify the headland commanding the entrances to St. Thomas Bay and Marsascala with the construction of a strong coastal tower. There, in 1614, Grand Master Alof de Wignacourt and his council ordered the building of a strong tower ‘similar’ to the ones that had already been erected at St. Paul’s Bay and St. Lucian.

The Bastioned-Tower – foreign influence

The new structure was a sturdy rectangular construction fitted with four small corner bastions, elongated vertically in the form of turrets. This tower, like its sister structures at Marsaxlokk and St. Paul’s Bay, was designed to serve

as a garrisoned fort and was built strong enough to mount a battery of heavy cannon on its roof. Indeed, in many documents, these towers were actually referred to as fortini, meaning small forts, amd sometimes eve as forti (forts). The late Prof. Quentin Hughes, in his pioneering studies on Maltese fortifications, was the first to recognize that the towers’ corner turrets were actually veritable bastions, designed to allow a limited degree of flanking fire along the faces of the intervening faces, making the whole structures, in essence, proper bastioned forts.

To date, it is not known who the architect of the St. Thomas Tower was. Traditionally, it was assumed that the Wignacourt towers were designed by the Maltese resident military engineer Vittorio Cassar, son of the renowned Girolamo Cassar and assistant to Papal military engineer Francesco Laparelli during the building of the fortified city of Valletta. This claim, however, has now been discredited. For one thing, Vittorio died in 1609 and so could not have been around to design and work on the tower, which was begun in 1614. The only towers built in Vittorio’s time were Garzes Tower in Gozo, and perhaps St. Paul Bay Tower which was begin in the same year of his death. Garzes Tower (named after Grand Master Martin Garzes who left money in his will for the construction of the tower) was the first of the coastal towers to be erected in the Maltese islands and is documented to have been built to the plan designed by the Italian military engineer Giovanni Rinaldini

St. Thomas Tower and Battery Marsascala Malta

Dr Stephen C Spiteri Ph.D.


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da Ancona in 1599. When eventually built in 1605, however, it lacked any form of flanking turrets and so, as such, could not have served as the proto-type of the Wignacourt structures that followed. Nor could the construction of the large coastal tower at Capo Passaro, on nearby Sicily, built in 1607 by the military engineer Giuliano Lasso (a tower which was frequently visited by the Order’s Galleys on their outbound corso) have served as inspiration either, since, likewise, it was devoid of corner turrets.

Vittorio Cassar’s influence on the design of the Wigancourt bastioned-tower solution, if any, could only have manifested itself at St. Paul’s Bay Tower, built in 1609, which is where we first encounter the corner turrets, albeit in an embryonic form. This tower was then followed by St. Lucian Tower in 1610, which was a larger structure with bigger turrets crowned by bulbous parapets. In both cases, however, the turrets did not project outwards from the base of the tower to form true bastions.

Some sources mention the Maltese capomastro Gerolamo Bonici as the architect of St. Thomas Bay Tower but recent studies by the present author show that the design of this tower, i.e., idea for the turret solution adopted in all of the Wignacourt towers (with the exception of Marsalforn Tower), was most probably imported from abroad and influenced by contemporary coastal towers being erected in the Kingdom of Two Sicilies and its dependencies, as well as in Spain and its colonies in the new world.

The present author was able to trace various similar architectural solutions which were being employed concurrently around the turn of the seventeenth century in dealing with the threat of corsairing raids. The most striking of these, undeniably, is the Fortalesa de Porto Pi, also known as Castell de San Carlos in the island of Majorca (Mallorca in Spanish). This coastal fort was constructed in 1610-12 (i.e., around the same time that St. Lucian Tower was being erected in Malta) and represents the

first isolated small bastioned fort constructed by the Spaniards in the island of Majorca. The need for a tower at Porto Pi was first discussed by Majorca’s Colegio de Mercaderes in 1600, following which a request for financial assistance was made to King Philip III in 1607. Initially it was decided to build a circular fort but, on the strong insistence of King Philip himself, a rectangular bastioned structure was constructed instead. This was a marked departure from the circular type of fortificaciones costeras which had been employed around Majorca’s shores till then. The new tower, as a result, was built in the form of a small fort with four corner bastions. It carried a battery of six cannon on its terrace and was approached

by a detached flight of steps (later demolished when the tower was enclosed within a larger fort in 1662-63). Its construction cost 12,000 libras (see picture below).

This bastioned-tower solution seems to have been influenced by the design of earlier sixteenth- century small bastioned coastal forts, such as that built by the Spaniards in Havana, the Castillo de la Fuerza. Although significantly larger than the later bastioned-towers under discussion, these puny compact forts had set a pattern for small coastal works which sought to acquire a greater resistance than that which could be provided by a simple rectangular design. The solution of adding turrets to large casemated towers


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was applied to two such coastal towers built in Cuba by Juan Battista Antonelli at Cojimar and Chorrera. Both the Torreon de Cojimar and the Fortaleza di Chorrera were proposed in 1633 and begun in1645, i.e., a few years before Fort St.Agatha, the last of the Maltese bastioned-tower forts was being built in Mellieha (1649).

Another bastioned-tower design similar to St.Thomas Tower can be found in the Castello (or Torre) della Tonnara on the small island of Formica, off Trapani. Here the similarity is also very striking. The date of the construction of this bastioned tower, however, has still to be determined by the author to see if it materialized before or after 1609. A report drawn up in 1640 shows it to have then already been in dire need of repair, implying that it must have been standing for quite some time.

Undeniably, these examples raise many questions about the authorship and origins of the layout of and configuration of the ‘Wignacourt’ bastioned-type of tower design, and on the actual influence, if any, of the foreign designs on the plan and layout of St. Thomas Tower. This subject, therefore, demands further study and is currently the object of ongoing research and investigation by the present author.

Shape, Form, and Structure

Like at the Castell de San Carlos, the corner turrets at St. Thomas Tower projected outwards in the form of veritable pentagonal bastions, giving the whole structure a distinctive four-bastioned, star-shaped fort in plan. The projection at the base gave the turrets wider flanks and, as a result, allowed for the deployment of armament in the form of spingardi, falconetti on cavaletti and muschettoni da posta through covered embrasures.

Curiously, the other three Wignacourt towers to follow in the wake of St. Thomas Tower somehow abandon the bastioned plan.

Detail from Prof. Quentin Hughes’ early

notes on Maltese fortifications

showing his sketch of St.Thomas

Tower and legend identifying it as ‘as a proper bastioned

fort’. (Author’s collection)


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Marsalforn Tower in Gozo (1614) lacked turrets altogether while St. Mary Tower in Comino (1618) followed the St. Lucian pattern with the base of the turrets disappearing within the battered lower half of the structure. Nothing is known about Delle Grazie Tower (1620), however, but the sum disbursed on its construction, and its few guns, implies that it could not have been much larger in size and shape than St. Paul Bay Tower. It is only at St. Thomas Tower, therefore, that the turrets assumed a distinctive bastioned format.

The construction of St. Thomas Tower cost 13,450 scudi making it the second most expensive of the Wignacourt towers to be built, after St. Mary Tower in Comino which cost the sum of 18,628 scudi. Much of the difference in cost would have gone to absorb the higher transportation costs of materials and supplies, however, which had to be shipped to the practically barren island of Comino.

Structurally, St. Thomas Tower was built around two adjoining and interlinked barrel vaults, which, in

the parlance of the period, rendered the tower à prova di bomba and also allowed it to mount heavy pieces of artillery on its roof, thus enabling it to serve as a coastal artillery platform: ‘Due interni ambienti, ossia magazzini à troll di bomba, larghi tre canne e lunghi otto tra loro comunicati, da servire all’occorenza per allogiamenti’. The thickness of the walls was around 5 metres in places, while the corner turrets, or bastions, were themselves of solid construction, filled in with a

tightly-packed mass of rubble and earth behind thick masonry skins: ‘I muri erano di una grossezza di due canne e mezzo’. The whole structure was purposely over-designed and solidly built to absorb serious punishment from naval bombardment, ‘est solide et … elle est à l’abrij de la bombe’.

Entrance to the tower was through a vaulted doorway set within a turret located centrally in the landward face of the structure. This turret was surmounted by a corpo

Author's graphic reconstruction of St. Thomas Tower and Battery - 3D computer model (Copyright,

Stephen C Spiteri 2010).

Author's graphic reconstruction of St. Thomas Tower (Copyright, Stephen

C Spiteri 2010).


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Extensive restoration works undertaken by the Restoration Unit at St Thomas Tower, M'Scala. (Image Source: Author's private collection).


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Nineteenth-century plan of St.Thomas Tower and Battery and enveloping ditch (Photo: Author’s collection).

the tower’s heavy doors. Palisaded gates consisted of wooden stakes, nailed to a framework, pointed at the upper end and sometimes tipped with metal points.

The Order’s records show that these were fan-shaped for small works such as towers and batteries, although the type then designed ‘alla Maltese’ was not very effective in keeping people out.

Late nineteenth-century photographs of St. Thomas Tower show it still fitted with a large rectangular palisade, although it is unclear if this was actually a Hospitaller-period pattern, or one rebuilt during the early British period, of which there were many by the late nineteenth century.

The Fosso

An important defensive element was the fosso, or ditch, enveloping the tower, later also extended to incorporate the battery. The tower’s ditch is around 5 canes wide (10 metres) in front of the faces and reaches its widest span in front of the bastion salients where it is some 17 metres wide. The fosso of the coastal battery, on the other hand, is much smaller and measures around 4.5 metres in width. The ditch was excavated in soft rock and seems to have been originally revetted with masonry in places, as evidenced by the written records and description of repairs. The nature of the rock

on which the tower was built seems to have affected the stability of the structure soon after its completion such that the base of the tower’s walls had to be reinforced with buttresses, or delfini as they were then known (sometimes also referred to as contraforti). It is not clear at what stage in the tower’s history these buttresses were grafted onto the structure, but their manner of construction tends to suggest that they were added incrementally, some perhaps even as late as the early nineteenth century. The fact that one of these buttresses was already reported as being in a poor state of repair in 1766, described as ‘mezzo caduto’ (half-ruined), tends to suggest these buttresses were then already antique features and could date to very early in the tower’s life.

The Coastal Battery

From around 1714 onwards, The implementation of a coastal defence strategy involving the defence of all bays and landing places around the island with a system of batteries, redoubts, and entrenchments, saw the Order’s military engineers add a semi-circular gun platform to the seaward side of St. Thomas Tower, ‘une grande batterie circulaire sus la tour di M’Scala du coste’ de la mer’. This was a simple prepared position designed to take large calibre guns

di guardia, or guardroom, which was added at a later stage, itself fitted with external flag-pole holders. A small marble escutcheon with Wignacourt’s family coat of arms is mounted in a boxed frame recess above the doorway. The entrance was served by a wooden bascule drawbridge of the type commonly employed in Malta and known locally as ponte levatoio à fleccie e catena. Fortunately, the tower still retains its drawbridge lifting mechanism, the only example of its kind to survive on the island, although its wooden arms extending outwards from the tower were vandalized and set on fire and are now heavily charred, while the wooden tavolatura of the drawbridge itself has long since disappeared.

The fleccie e catena type of ponte levatoio was the oldest and most common type of drawbridge mechanism employed by the knights up until the end of the seventeenth century. It was a simple and reliable device, where the counterweight was attached to the inner end of the arms. The arms protruded from vertical slits cut in the face of the outer wall and were linked by chains to the outer end of a wooden platform (tavolatura). In the closed position, the bascule arms were only partly raised. The bascule drawbridge à fleccie could usually be easily operated by a single man and was considered the best suited for local conditions since it allowed adequate access for the flow of carts and carriages (‘libero passaggio alli carri e carrozze’) and was virtually trouble-free. The counterweight, fitted to the inner end of the arms, consisted of a closed wooden box filled with iron shot or other heavy weights.

As in many towers, the drawbridge and entrance were approached by a masonry flight of steps which was itself protected by wooden palisaded gate, the so-called ‘rastelli raddopiati di palizate’. Such palisades were set up as a precaution against a coup de main and were intended to give the sentinels on duty at the gate enough time in which to pull up the ponderous drawbridge and close


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Detail from the Order’s records show-ing the expenses incurred in the con-struction of St.Thomas Tower Battery (Photo: Author’s collection).

and mortars. The battery, roughly semi-circular in plan, was detached from the tower at its open gorge by the tower’s ditch and was protected from its seaward side by a shallow rock-hewn fosso some 2 canes wide.

The Misura & Conto Sommario dell’Opere di Fortificationi fatte nel Lido delle Marine, drawn up in 1716, gives the total expenses incurred in the construction of the St. Thomas Tower Battery as 382.8.11.1 scudi, of which the largest amount of 112 scudi went into the excavation (scavazione) of the ditch, followed by the erection of a counterscarp revetted in masonry (57.9 scudi) and the construction of the parapet wall (Muro a due facciate - 96.2.5 scudi). The paved gun platform (piattaforma) cost 57.9 scudi and the ramp leading down into the ditch at the gorge of the battery, cost another 15 scudi to fashion out of

the bedrock. The transportation of some 80 salmi of lime, sand, and puzzolana to the site involved an additional outlay of 3.4 scudi, which material was then employed in the making of lime mortar and used in the riboccatura (pointing) and biancheggiatura (whitewashing) of the parapets and revetments, a task which was valued at 10 scudi. Compared to the expenses involved in the construction of the other coastal batteries, such as those erected at Benghisa (1,855 scudi), Elminiech (1,451 scudi), Ghzira (1,109 scudi), and Rihama (1,179 scudi), the construction of

the battery at St.Thomas Tower was relatively inexpensive. This, however, derived largely from the fact that the platform was neither fitted with blockhouses, nor with defensive redans, gateways, and cistern, given that the protection and accommodation of the guncrews was adequately provided by the nearby tower.

Initially, the battery, as in many other examples erected in 1714-15, lacked embrasures since the guns were deployed crudely ‘à Barbette’, a situation that so worried visiting French military engineers in 1761 that they quickly had a high parapet built with ‘des merlons parce qu’elle peut etre battier par les vaisseuax et les galères’. By the late eighteenth century it was considered important to shield the gun crews of all low batteries behind high parapets with guns firing through embrasures.

Later in the century, the Order’s military engineers also sought to protect the tower and battery with entrenchment fortifying the tip of the promontory, ‘En avant de cette Batterie est une pointe assez spacieuse et accessible qui s’elargit, jusqu’à 100 ou 120 toises de chaque côté de la tour. Il faudroit tirer du pied de la tour de chaque côté un retrenchement qui aboutiroit à la mer et seront flanqué par le feu de la tour’. This entrenchment, however, does not appear to have been built to its full extent.

Author's graphic reconstruction of

St. Thomas Battery. (Copyright, Stephen C

Spiteri 2010).


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Plan of existing and proposed coastal fortifications at Marsascala and St.Thomas Bay showing the proposed entrenchment around St.Thomas Tower (Photo: Author’s collection – source: National Library of Malta).

Strategic Role

By the middle of the eighteenth century, the role of St.Thomas tower had changed from being simply that of a coastal watch-post to one akin to that of a command centre, or keep, responsible for co-ordinating the many coastal defences in the area spanning from Zonqor Point to St.Thomas Bay. The fortifications in this disctrict comprised three batteries, two other towers, and two sets of entrenchments. The militia regulations of 1761, for example, mention St. Thomas Tower as the official depot or ‘magazzino di deposito’ for the distribution ‘della polvere ed armi’ for the Zejtun militia regiment entrusted with the defence of the area. The tower was to hold 100 extra muskets with their bayonets and ramrods, as well as an adequate supply of cartridges (scartocci) and lead musket balls (pietre di fucili). This deposito was kept under lock and key (‘serrati e ben custoditi dalle sentinelle’) and was placed under the command of a knight who was assisted by a ‘uomo di penna’ whose job it was to take note of the issue of weapons and supplies during times of emergency.

In one instance during the late 1700s, the Congregation of War and Fortification was somewhat distraught to discover that the Capo maestro della Torre San Tommaso had failed to see to the repair of the nearby entrenchments as he had been bound to do, ‘…non sia adempito secondo la sua promessa, all’obligo impostoli di rifabbricare detta trunciera, che anzi sono scorsi tre anni e mezzo senza che si sia curato farvi la minima riparazione ... essendo il solo luogo di detta contrada, vi ivi si potrebbe radunare la milizia’.

The Order’s military planners generally envisaged that St. Thomas Tower (together with that of St. Lucian and St. Agatha) could easily hold its own against attack. In times of emergency, a garrison of thirty men was considered sufficient for the job if adequately supplied with enough provisions for forty days, ‘Si stima che le torri debbarsi

conservare anche dopo lo sbarco, essendo in stato di mantenersi con 30 uomini. Questi sono la Torre di Marsacirocco, quella di S. Tommaso, e la Torre Rossa verso le Freghi. In questa raagione bisogna provedere quanto prima detti Torri per la sussistenza del loro presidio almeno per giorni 40 di tempo e darli le monizionji di gwerra necessari per la loro difesa’. At other times, however, it was often recommended that the contingent of troops stationed at tower be increased to 200 soldiers.

Nonetheless, the tower did not lose its ordinary coastal watch duties, even in matters unrelated with defence. In the winter of 1742, for example, owing to need to create coastal pickets following an outbreak of plague in Messina (Sicily), the sentinels stationed on top of St.Thomas Tower were provided with a ‘Guardiola di tela incerata’. This temporary canvas shelter was erected to shield the guards from the ‘eccessivo freddo che si fece scendere in quell’anno’.

Armament and equipment

St.Thomas Tower and its battery comprised one of the heaviest armed coastal positions to be found anywhere around the shores of

the Maltese islands. Prior to the construction of the coastal battery in 1714, the tower doubled as an artillery platform with guns mounted on its roof. Details of its early armament tend to differ, although it seems to have had at least four 10-pounders and another four six-pounders mounted on field carriages (ceppi lunghi) by the end of the seventeenth century, as well as a solitary bronze mortar of unspecified calibre used for firing stone shot; ‘Vi sono in questa torre otto cannoni di differente calibro et un mortaro di bronzo per tirare pietre’. There were also two spingardi, perhaps mounted in the embrasures in the corner turrets, for close-in defence.

During the national emergency of 1761, the French military advisors headed by the Comte de Bourlamaque and the military engineer Nicholas de Ponteleroy recommended that the tower and battery be armed with three bronze mortars, four 24-pounders, nine 12-pounders, and four 6-pounders. It does not seem, however, that their recommendations for re-armament were heeded. In 1769, it was found necessary to replace three of the old ceppi as well as ‘i ceppi di mortaro’. In 1770, there are also recorded two boxes filled with 28 muskets, as well as 22 halberds and spontoons.


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This page: Details of the Corpo di Guardia,the flagpole holder pro-jecting from its facade, wooden palisade, and drawbridge lifting mechanism (Author's collection).

Most of the other towers also had a number of muschettoni da posta, but for some unknown reason, none have been recorded as kept at St.Thomas Tower.

The low battery, on the other hand, was armed with eight 12-pounder iron guns. In 1785, the tower and battery were together equipped with a total of 1,192 iron cannon balls, and 239 rounds of bagged grapeshot in three different calibres, together with 26 barrels of gunpowder containing some 9 quintali of Polvere di Genova.

An inventory of St. Thomas Tower, compiled by the out-going commander of artillery, the knight Fra Giovanni Francesco de St. Felix, gives a detailed list of the equipment, munitions, tools, and

armaments as found inside the tower and its adjoining battery in 1785.

The Order’s records make various references to St. Thomas Tower and its eighteenth century battery. Apart from information on its armament, munitions, and state of repair, one finds various documents relating to officers and men sent to command and garrison this outpost. The officers in charge of the tower were frequently known as Capi Mastri Bombardieri and were employed for definite periods of time. By 1631 the Order’s regulations had come to stipulate that the ‘forte San Thomaso, à marsascala’ be garrisoned by a capomastro and two bombardiers – the same as laid out for St. Lucian, St. Paul’s, Comino etc. By the mid-seventeehth century the Capo Mastro of St.Thomas Tower was receiving a steady salary of around 70 scudi a year. Amongst the most famous of these was Capo Mastro Angelo Mifsud who had earlier served as a bombardier on the Order’s galleys and was involved in the capture of a renowned Turkish corsair.

Modern Context

St. Thomas Tower played a small and inconsequential role in the defence of Malta during Napoleon Bonaperte’s invasion in 1798. Historical records show that St. Thomas Tower was retained by the British military well into the nineteenth century. The rooms erected on top of the corner turrets, together with a thin screening wall pierced with small musketry loopholes (not of the type and pattern generally found on Hospitaller works), erected on top of the parapet along the landward side, seem to date from this later period. The rooms may have been constructed either to help ease the garrison accommodation, or as prison cells during the time when the tower was being used for the purpose of incarceration. Structurally, and visually, these


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Restoration works undertaken by the Restoration Unit at St Thomas Tower, M'Scala. (Image Source: Author's private collection).

Above, Marble escutcheon with defaced coat of arms of Grand Master Alof de Wignacourt fixed in a recessed frame on the central turret containing the main entrance into the tower.

additional rooms have served to raise and heighten the profile of the corner turrets, distorting the tower’s original architectural proportions when seen from certain angles.

Nowadays, St. Thomas Tower can be found in a relatively

reasonable state of repair, largely as a result of the extensive restoration interventions carried out by the Restoration Unit in recent years. Still, the tower remains unused, begging for a sympathetic and productive use as a cultural venue. The restoration intervention focused on the replacement of the tower’s considerable areas of consumed and eroded masonry. Owing to the tower’s exposed position near the sea, and its construction in soft Globigerina limestone (Maltese tal-franka), the exterior masonry fabric had suffered considerably from erosion and weathering. A study of the various facades, particularly along the seaward-facing sides, reveals many earlier repair interventions. Unfortunately, too, the modern urban sprawl of the nearby town of Marsascala has expanded considerably in recent years to completely surround and engulf the tower with modern buildings and

a large hotel, thereby robbing this historical structure of its contextual legibility and its important, indeed critical, relationship to the coastline and the sea. Like a solitary fish in an aquarium, St. Thomas Tower now sits as an uncomfortable centerpiece inside a stretch of open ground, a rude combination of paved piazza and virgin land, both hemmed in by a thick alien band of stone and concrete buildings. Hopefully, the new commercial development which is to be replace the old hotel will be redesigned in such a way so as to provide a corridor of open space that will help to re-link the tower, both visually and contextually, to the headland foreshore and the sea.

Full references and notes will be given in a forthcoming new edition of Fortresses of the Knights currently being prepared by the author.

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The Gozo Citadel at Ferrara Salone

The restoration of the Gozo Cit-tadella and the European Union co-funded restoration projects on some of the most important works of mili-tary architecture in the Maltese is-lands currently being undertaken by the Maltese government were given prominent international exposure at the Salone dell’Arte del Restauro e della Conservazione dei Beni Culturali e Ambientali in Ferrara, Italy’s foremost and only exhibition entirely focussed on the restoration, conservation and protection of the historical, artistic, architectural and natural heritage. The Gozo Citadel, or Cittadella as it is often called, is one of the most iconic and important architectural and historic works of fortification that the Maltese islands posses and has been earmarked for a large scale holistic restoration in-tervention that will allow it to function as the prime cultural heritage site that it deserves to be.

The 17th Edition of the Ferrara Salone held from Wednesday 24th to Saturday 27th March 2010, was hosted at the Ferrara trade fair centre and comprised some 280 exhibitors - producers of materials and technologies, museum installa-tions, services and software provid-ers, restoration centres, and other foundations, universities, public and agencies all involved in the world of conservation and restoration of herit-age buildings .

The Ferrara Salone’s rich pro-gramme of initiatives qualifies it as a unique event in its category and a reference point for operators in the conservation and restoration sector, attracting every year thousands of architects, engineers, restorers and heritage-experts and managers from all over the world. The Salone also hosted four days of conferences, discussions and technical meetings dealing with all aspect connected to

the restoration and preservation of the historical and cultural heritage, promoted and organised by promi-nent restoration entities which are at the forefront of the lastest restora-tion technologies. The event was sponsored by the Italian Prime Min-ister Office and the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in collaboration with the Ministry for the Cultural Heritage and the Agency for the Cultural Her-itage of the Emilia Romagna Region.

News items & commentaries2010 / 2011


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Among the most prominent exposition was that showcasing the specialized laser scanning map-ping and documentation exercise carried out by Consortio Ferrara Ricerche (involving the University of Ferrara) on the bastioned cita-del in Gozo which won the public tender for these works. This work, which was undertaken as part of the European-Union-funded restoration project on the historical fortifica-tions of Malta, is one of the largest architectural surveys undertaken by laser scanning of its kind carried out in the Maltese islands and will serve to provide accurate mapping and documentation of the actual physical state and varied pathologies of the fortifications and immediate terrain of the Gozo citadel, and help guide the intervention strategies required.

The Consortio Ferrara Ricerche exhibition stand, which featured, among other things, an interactive three-dimensional computer model of the Cittadella, various schematic and explanatory panels, two video presentations, and a large scale computer-cut wooden model of the Gozo citadel, attracted consider-able interest from the thousands of visitors to the exhibition. A Mal-tese delegation of officials from the Restoration Unit, Works Division, involved in the ERDF restoration project, was also present to give a 20 minute presentation designed to highlight the extent and nature of the ongoing and projected restora-tion works prepared by the Maltese government.publications

The Cittadella laser documentation project also featured prominently on three Italian publications which were distributed at this international exhibition, namely Architetti - Idee Cultura e Progetti newspaper, which carried a fully-illustrated two-page spread on the works (downloaded from www.architetti.com) as well as a full photograph on the font cover , the journal Paesaggio Urbano (2.2010), which carried a detail description of the nature and technicalities of the various aspects of the project (and front cover) and the Recupero & Conservazione (front cover).

Thousands visit St. Michael’s Counter-guard, Valletta on Open Day, 15/16 May 2010

Over three thousand people are reported to have visited St Michael’s Counterguard in Valletta during the Open Weekend on 15 and 16 May 2010 as part of the initiatives designed to draw attention to the major restoration works on the forti-fications of Malta being undertaken by the Maltese government with the financial assistance of the European regional Development Fund (ERDF 039).

Many all of the people who vis-ited the site, including many Valletta residents, had never had the oppor-tunity to step inside this unique and fascinating outerwork of the Valletta land front fortifications. Valletta is Malta’s most important, unique, and renowned work of military architec-ture, as well as a world heritage site.

MilitaryArchitecture.com was present on site during the event and was pleasantly surprised to note both the huge public turnout (espe-cially on Sunday – despite the fact that the event coincided with another annual manifestation – the firing of the 100-ton gun at Rinella Battery) as well as the genuine expressions of sheer satisfaction voiced by most

Rural Building at Ghajn

of the visiting public, particularly the Valletta residents who turned out in their hundreds eager not to miss this rare opportunity of exploring an unknown section of their historic city.

The event was organized by the Restoration Unit of the Ministry for Resources and Rural Affairs.

The site is currently closed off in preparation for restoration works which will involve, among other things, the reconstruction of the demolished chapel of St Roche, the consolidation of the consumed Gardjola (echaugette), the con-solidation of the masonry fabric and earthen terrepleins, the removal of trees and their damaging roots, the reconstruction of the missing sally-port drawbridge, and the opening of gorge of the rock-hewn covered passage way leading up into the ditch. The restoration works also envisage the interventions on the adjoining covertway and rock-hewn glacis, likewise a unique element dating back to of Valletta’s sixteenth-century system of outerworks.

Once restored St. Michael’s Counterguard and its communica-tion passages will provide another access point into the fortified city of Valletta and will serve to link the various elements of this historic city’s main fortified enceinte, creat-ing a unique rampart walk and herit-age trail.


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ilitaryarchitecture.com


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Znuber structure confused for Hospitaller-period tower

An article in the Sunday Times of Malta by Cynthia Busuttil enti-tled ‘Crumbling unique tower dates back to the Knights’ (Sunday Times 19.04.2010) claimed that a tower-like structure at Ghajn Znuber near Manikata, was a Hospitaller-period militia coastal ‘turret’.

The author, however, failed to explain the basis on which this claim by Fondazzjoni Wirt Artna was being made, especially since all the histori-cal and architectural evidence todate indicates otherwise.

To begin with, Prof. Stanley Fiorini’s masterful study of the Mahras watchposts for the years 1417 and 1647 (see Sacra Militia, 2, 2003, pp.16-28) does not list Ghajn Znuber near Ghajn Tuffieha as one of the Universitas’ militia coastal watch positions. As a matter of fact, there were only three militia stations along this north-western stretch of the Island’s coastline, located at Blat Moghza, Lippija, and Ghajn Tuffieha, and all were fortified with towers by

Grand Master Jean de Lascaris-Castellar (reigned 1636-1657). The Blat Moghza tower, Torre Capra, fell in the early 1700s as a result of the subsidence of the cliff face. Likewise, historical records from the 1740s, documenting the setting up of an island-wide system of guard posts to enforce a year-long watch around the shores as a result of an outbreak of plague in nearby Sicily, do not even mention the site. Had this location ever been used for mi-litia watch duties, then it would have figured somewhere in the historical records by the mid-18th century!

The only recorded ‘Znuber’ position, as mentioned by both Prof. Stanley Fiorini , and even earlier, by Mons. A. Mifsud in La Milizia e Le Torre Antiche in Malta ( published in 1920), was actually situated on the other south-eastern side of the island at Hal Far - the so-called ‘torricella’ of Wied Znuber.

Ghajn Znuber, near Manikata, therefore, was NOT one of the des-ignated militia watch posts. But there are other factors which question the claim as to the ‘uniqueness’ and dat-ing of this structure. Firstly, there is the manner of its construction. The structures’ thin walls, especially on the south face, large ground-floor openings, irregular stone courses, and internal iron beams all imply a relatively late rural building, possibly dating from the early 1800s. The structure also shows signs of hav-ing been very heavily rebuilt before 1902, when it first features in the cartographic record, acquiring in the process an external staircase.

Secondly, the structure is located too far inland to have been of any use as a coastal watch position. All the watch-towers and militia open-air look out posts on this side of the Island’s coastline were perched at the very edge of the cliff-face for maximum visual command over the seaward approaches. The inland militia positions of Mandra, Ghajn Targa, Gnien il-Borg and Ghajn Razul, on the other hand, were located further south on the strategic towering heights of the Ras-il-Gebel-to-Wardija ridge.

It is interesting to note that the

article described the structure as a ‘turret’ rather than a tower, acknowl-edging the ambiguity presented by its non-military architectural configu-ration. The Order’s records do men-tion the fact that prior to the building of coastal watch towers in the sev-enteenth century, some of the militia coastal watch posts (dating back to the medieval period) had simple huts to shelter the sentinels on duty, the ‘capanne all’anticha’, but these, as the term implies, were not towers but plain rustic shacks. Typologi-cally, therefore, the Ghajn Znuber building does not even fall within this category of militia outposts.

Rather than a militia watch-post dating to the Hospitaller period, therefore, it would appear that the Ghajn Znuber structure could have served as a hunting lodge before being pressed into service by the British military towards the end of the 1930s. The Maltese rural land-scape is rich in domestic tower-like structures – farm buildings, barum-bari, ect. Simple cubic and tower-like structures were (and in some places still are) a characteristic feature of traditional Maltese building typology up until the early twentieth century. This does not automatically make all of them militia watch posts!

Recuperating the Post of Castile at Vittoriosa

The bastioned Hornwork of the Post of Castile in Vittoriosa was finally given back its proper legibility with the dismantling of a large oil-bunkering structure which had been crudely grafted on to the lower half of the bastioned enceinte during the past century.

This utilitarian structure, of little architectural merit and negligible historic significance, has for the past century deprived Birgu of its most powerful, dramatic, and evocative views along its bastioned enceinte.

Birgu was Malta's first forti-fied maritime settlement and the first location in Malta which was enclosed by a bastioned enceinte (Citta Nuova) following the arrival of


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the Order of St John in 1530. Birgu withstood three months of Turkish bombardment and assaults during the Great Siege of 1565, earning it its title of Vittoriosa (victorious ). The city's defences were largely rebuilt after the siege under the supervision of the Maltese military engineer, Gi-rolmu Cassar, and the fortress was again heavily rebuilt during the early eighteenth century under the direc-tion of the Order's French military engineers.

Unfortunately, over the course of the past century or so, some impor-tant areas of the harbour fortifica-tions were obstructed with various utilitarian buildings and structures that have detracted considerably from the bastions' full architectural and physical power.

The area known as the Horn-works of the Post of Castile was one such place. This important stretch of the Birgu enceinte, facing Kalkara Creek, and the site of the most important battles of the Great Siege of 1565, provides one of the most dramatic and sculpturally powerful statements of the bastioned trace as introduced by the knights of the Order of St John. In this instance, however, most of the inherent visual power of these magnificent ramparts was dissipated away by a poorly-sited naval depot built early in the twentieth century, which structure was grafted onto the lower half of the ramparts. The recent disman-tling works, which were carried out carefully by hand, also revealed the considerable damage that was inflicted to the bastion's masonry fabric by the insertion of the heavy steels beams and concrete bonding employed in the construction of the oil-bunker's roof.

The dismantling works have also brought to light a sally-port which links directly to the ditch of the inter-nal retrenchment.

This intervention will also make the area more imposing, particularly from a historical, aesthetic, and tour-ism point of view, as it has helped to re-establish the proper relationship between the ramparts, their fore-shore, and the sea.

After a lapse of a century, the Birgu fortifications are beginning to be seen and experienced as they were originally meant to be.

De Guiral Battery spared a restaurant

Military Architecture.com welcomed the decision taken by the Malta Environment and Planning Authority (MEPA) on Thursday 1 July 2010, turning down an application for the construction of a restaurant on the foreshore of Fort St. Angelo in an area known as De Guiral Battery.

The application, submitted by Cottonera Waterfront plc ., as part of the Cottonera Waterfront Regeneration Project, proposed the restoration of the De Guiral Battery and its conversion into a restaurant that would, if built, have been highly visible from most of the scenic view points around the Grand Harbour, particularly from Valletta and Senglea. The MEPA refusal was based on the fact that the proposed development would have changed the external and internal appearance of a Grade 1 listed building and that it went beyond scientific restoration and rehabilitation.

MilitaryArchitecture.com strongly feels that the proposed conversion of the De Guiral Battery into a restaurant does no justice at all to a historic landmark of such high calibre as Fort St Angelo. MilitaryArchitecture.com is of the opinion that commercial activities within landmark and iconic works fortifications should be always sited and implemented with a high degree of sensitivity to the historical and architectural context and surroundings.

In today’s world, it is important that the ever-present pressures to render conservation interventions financially viable should not be allowed to negatively influence the visual or physical integrity of historical monuments. Although, it is true, many historic forts around the world have their own catering facilities, heritage planners should always seek to incorporate such elements in a very subdued and sympathetic manner without impinging on the character of the monument itself. At Castel


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Sant’Angelo in Rome, for example, the Ristorante la Cucineria dei Masi, is often used to cater for the Notti Animate sulle Terrazze (cultural events held on the bastion platforms) but its tables and chairs are hidden behind the ramparts’ high parapets and, when not in use, can be quickly removed without much ado. Likewise, the Moat Cafe outside the Tower of London leaves no imprint on the castle’s walls, which serve also as a dramatic backdrop for an ice-skating rink in winter. A two-year conservation and refurbishment project inside the Tower of London itself, transformed the Armouries building (erected in 1663-4) into a state-of-the-art catering and conference facility that does credit to the historic character of the tower.

In other words, such facilities should not be made to compete with the historical architecture they are meant to serve. Any future proposal for a catering facility at Fort St Angelo should be guided accordingly.

The De Guiral Battery was originally a small fleur d’eau (i.e., sea-level) battery built just prior to the Great Siege of 1565 at the tip of the promontory below the Castrum Maris and designed to protect the iron chain closing the mouth of Birgu creek. It would appear that this

battery was originally fashioned out of the rocky foreshore at the foot of the castle but was later enlarged in the seventeenth century with the addition of a bigger parapet designed to house more cannon and provide a wider field of fire across the harbour. Three of the original embrasures, cut out in the rocky foreshore, are still visible and most probably date to the Great Siege period.

Historically, the De Guiral Battery was one of the most effective works of fortification ever built by the knights of St John, for it served to defeat, single-handedly, a major Turkish seaborne assault on the neighbouring fortress of Senglea. Named after the Hospitaller knight Francesco de Guiral, who was placed in charge of the battery together with the crew of his galley just prior to the arrival of the Turkish armada, the position was, initially, totally detached from the old medieval castle to its rear. It only came to form part of Fort St Angelo following Don Carlos de Grunenburg’s reconstruction of the fort in the late 1680s. The architect of the original idea for the construction of the battery is not recorded (not as stated elsewhere in the local media, which attributes its construction to De Guiral himself ... see article at http://www.independent.com.mt/news.asp?newsitemid=108551 ). Another knight by the name of De Guiral, Fra Goudisalvo, together with Fra Carlo Durre, had been entrusted by the Order’s Council to oversee the completion of the Ferramolino cavalier in 1547, but there appears to be no link between this earlier knight and the construction of the battery.

Various engineers were operating in Malta prior to 1565, although most of them were, in effect, simply implementing the recommendations made by the renowned Baldassere Lanci in 1562. The sea-level batteries along the shore of the Castrum Maris (there was a second battery at the foot of the D’Homedes Bastion) subscribe to the notions of entrenchments and ritirate that were

strongly advocated by Lanci in his instructions to Grand Master Jean de Valette, many of which, like the entrenchment at the Post of Castile in Birgu, were actually constructed.

Either because it was very well concealed (although judging by D’Aleccio’s illustrations -see above - it was surely not hidden from sight) or because the Turks had seriously under-estimated its firepower, the Ottoman commanders failed to take into account the effect of the battery on their assault of 15 August 1565. A timely salvo fired from five pieces inside De Guiral’s Battery ripped violently through a small flotilla of large boats packed with Turkish troops as they sought to close in on the Spur of Senglea, shredding them to pieces. Nine of the largest boats were sunk outright, sending some 800 Janissaries and Levantines to the bottom of the sea, and, in the process, saving the hard-pressed garrison of Senglea from a terrible fate.

Eighteenth-century plans of Fort St Angelo show a slightly different , and larger, rectangular enclosure fitted with at least thirteen embrasures set in a thick parapet. Willem Schellinx, earlier in the seventeenth century, depicted the Valletta-facing side of the battery as having been pierced by four vaulted (i.e. roofed – possibly rock-hewn) embrasures and equipped with a small echaugette (Maltese gardjola) on the corner of the enceinte facing Senglea. The present-day De Guiral battery retains the remains of both the original rock-hewn emplacement and the later seventh-century enclosure. Most of this enceinte, however, has disappeared, and was replaced by a British-period boundary wall. The British military also appear to have effected various alterations to this part of the enceinte of Fort St Angelo, including the construction of a small magazine which they built into the Grunenburg enceinte, accessed from the sally-port tunnel.

The construction of the proposed restaurant would have interfered with the legibility of all these surviving features.


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Restoration of Fort St Angelo underway

In a press release dated 3rd September 2010, Dr Mario Demarco, Parliamentary Secretary for Tourism, Environment, and Culture within the Office of the Prime Minister informed the media that Heritage Malta has been implementing various restoration interventions at Fort St Angelo over the course of the past year and that the Maltese government is now also preparing an application for the European Regional Development Fund in order to complete the conservation and rehabilitation works necessary to enable this fort to be made accessible to the general public as a major cultural attraction.

A full development application was also submitted to MEPA late last year for the carrying out of a number of emergency interventions, namely the repair of the main access ramp, the restoration of the heavily-consumed main gate, the reconstruction of the vaulted entrance way (demolished during the war) and of the repair of the caved-in ceiling of the tunnel leading down to De Guiral Sally-port and battery. These works will also include the demolition of a swimming pool and water tower built

to service a short-lived hotel set up within the fort in the 1980s. Heritage Malta was allocated the sum of €1.5 million by the central government to enable it to carry out the required repairs.

MilitaryArchitecture.com welcomes these positive developments as it likewise believes that Fort St Angelo has all the elements and potential to make it a successful tourism product. It is one of the most iconographic landmarks within the Grand Harbour landscape. Its unique fusion of medieval, renaissance, and baroque elements endows it with great popular appeal while its many subterranean vaults, passages and guve all make it an exciting place waiting to be discovered and explored by many Maltese and tourists alike.

The story of Fort St Angelo begins in obscurity and although its origins are popularly credited to the Arabs no mention is made of the castle in the terms of surrender of the island to Count Roger in 1091. The castle is first mentioned in thirteenth-century Angevin documents where it was referred to as the Castrum Maris (castle by the sea). Little has survived, above ground, of the original medieval fortress, however, since most of the structure was replaced by substantial alterations carried out by the knights of St John during the early-sixteenth and late- seventeenth centuries as the Order desperately sought to drag the old and obsolete stronghold into the modern gunpowder era.

The fort’s most famous moment occurred when it served as the Hospitaller keep during the Ottoman siege of Malta in 1565 even though its ramparts were neither assaulted nor breached by the Turks. The guns of one of its outer batteries, though not strictly speaking part of the fort, helped defeat a Turkish seaborne assault on the neighbouring fortress of Senglea.

The fort’s medieval configuration, which survived well into the seventeenth century, was only totally overhauled by the Knights in the 1680s, when the castle was

practically rebuilt and encased in hardstone, acquiring in the process its present-day appearance

The man largely responsible for these alterations was Colonel Don Carlos de Grunenburg, engineer to Viceroy and king of Spain, who was invited to Malta by the knights to assist them in updating the defences of the island.. His interventions gave the fort a defining angular form and a series of powerful gun batteries aimed at controlling the entrance to the Grand Harbour. Grunenburg went one step further and even loaned the Order the money to finance the works, given that the knights were then already heavily committed to the construction of the massive Cottonera, Firenzuola and Floriana enceintes ̶ a deed which earned him the rare privilege of displaying his coat of arms above the main gateway into the fort.

Throughout the British occupation of the Maltese islands, Fort St Angelo served largely as a naval establishment and depot. British alterations to the fort, luckily, were few and of marginal consequence – the most substantial of which was the construction of a casemated battery for three 9-inch RML guns at the level of No.2 Battery. However, these guns and parts of their emplacements were subsequently removed when the battery was converted into apartments for British officers in the early 20th century. The British, who at one time renamed the fort HMS Egmont, utilized it largely for its vast storage capacity, provided by its many bomb-proof and vaulted casemates and magazines.

Fort St Angelo suffered considerable damage during the Second World War from aerial bombardment. Most of this, however, was made good although the fort still retains a few small scars from that traumatic episode in the island’s history. Other serious damage was inflicted in relatively recent times when the fort was converted into a hotel and fitted with a swimming pool. In one tragic incident, part of the casemated barrel -vault adjoining the cavalier


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collapsed under the weight of the heavy machinery which was then being used to construct a bridge and a road leading into the fort

Heritage Malta took over responsibility for large parts of Fort St. Angelo in August 2007 and immediately set up the required security measures to control access into fort in an attempt to stop vandalism and other forms of misuse of the place. It also cleared the fort from tonnes of rubbish dumped there over the decades and put in motion the mechanisms necessary to draw up the studies and projects required for the rehabilitation of the fort, both in terms of short-term rescue interventions and also the more long-term restoration and rehabilitation objectives.

Over the course of the past months, Heritage Malta has undertaken the repair of various elements and features which required immediate attention such as the repair of the crumbling Great Siege bell-cot, the consolidation of 17th century powder magazine, and the replacement of various consumed parapet walls.

The roof of the 17th Century Polverista, for example, was cleaned from the debris and vegetation which had accumulated on it over the years, blocking the rainwater outlets and damaging the ceiling, while its covering of traditional deffun was re-applied to render it waterproof.

These works were carried out with the assistance of the Restoration Unit within the Ministry for Resources and Rural Affairs. The so-called ‘Great Siege’ bell, located high up on the towering cavalier, was restored by Heritage Malta’s conservators, and its bell-cot repaired by the Restoration Unit

MilitaryArchitecture.com is informed that works are now also scheduled to begin soon on the restoration of the heavily-consumed main gate, the reconstruction of the vaulted entrance way, the repair of the tunnel leading down to De Guiral battery, and the removal of the offending swimming pool and water tower .

Military Architecture.Com has also learnt that Heritage Malta is currently undertaking archaeological investigations within the fort aimed at clarifying the constructional details of various sensitive sections of the ramparts prior to the commencement of the projected repair works. These excavations, apart from serving to guide the type of structural interventions required, will also help shed important new light on various hidden aspects of Fort St. Angelo’s medieval origins.

Future Re-use

While applauding the authorities’ significant efforts in repairing and rehabilitating Fort St. Angelo, MilitaryArchitecture.com augurs that in converting the fort into the desired major tourism attraction , Heritage Malta does not to fall into the temptation of turning the place into some sort of commercial ‘theme park’.

A work of military architecture of the calibre of Fort St. Angelo needs no gimmicks to be appreciated and understood. Fort St Angelo has enough historical and architectural GRAVITAS to demand and capture attention on its own terms.

Indeed, it provides the perfect setting for narrating the dramatic and glorious history of the Hospitaller knights od the Order of St John in Outremer, Rhodes, and the Maltese islands and Tripoli.

The three adjoining casemates within Ferramolino’s Cavalier, for instance, are perfectly suited to house a museum dedicated to such an important theme, one still so sorely missing and yet so necessary to help place the knights of St John within their proper historical context and their six-hundred-year-long military tradition.

To this end, the established presence of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta (SMOM) at Fort St. Angelo should be seen as a great asset and a unique opportunity to help weave a fascinating educational and cultural experience for Maltese and foreign visitors alike.

New Drawbridge for Fort Manoel

Authentic wooden features are rare in Maltese fortifications, particularly those dating back to the eighteenth century and earlier. The only wooden elements from the Knights’ period still to be seen in Hospitaller forts and fortifications are usually the main fortress gates and doorways. Up until a century or so ago, however, many of these fortresses still flaunted various other original wooden fixtures such as palisades, flagpoles, trapdoors, and drawbridges. Of all these elements, it is perhaps the dearth of drawbridges with their tavolature (platforms) and lifting mechanisms which is most sorely felt as the absence of such features from fortress gateways serves to detract

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from a full and proper appreciation of the manner in which fortifications were meant to function. The only surviving example of a Hospitaller-period drawbridge, or better still, its partial remains, still to be found in situ can be seen at St Thomas Tower at Marsascala, however this is too badly mauled to enable visitors to understand its real external appearance.

The recent reconstruction of a wooden drawbridge at Fort Manoel, therefore, is a welcome exercise. For one thing it will give back a proper legibility to the fort’s gateway and will enable visitors to understand how the device actually functioned. The reconstruction of the drawbridges is part of the wide-ranging series of interventions which are being implemented by Midi plc in the restoration of Fort Manoel, one of the most imposing eighteenth century works of military architecture to be erected in the Maltese islands by the knights of the Order of St John. Named after Grand Master Antonio Manoel de Vilhena, who financed the work out of his own pocket, the fort was described in 1761 as being a ‘model of fortification’.

The drawbridge, or ponte levatoio ( as it is referred to in Hospitaller documents) was an indispensible device in the defence of the approaches leading into a fortress. By its very essence, the gateway, being virtually a hole in the ramparts, was the weakest element in the enceinte and, as such, required specially-designed devices to counter the handicap. One early solution with which military engineers sought to control the approaches and access points into a fortress was by fitting the gateway with a movable bridge that could be easily raised or lowered by the garrison to either prevent or accommodate entry into the fortress.

Technically called bascules from the French word for seesaw, drawbridges came in a variety of forms. That at Fort Manoel, designed by the Order’s resident French military engineer was commonly referred to as ‘a’ la

Vauban’ by virtue of its French design, a pattern which was then commonly in use throughout France. Indeed, the gateways erected anew, or else rebuilt, by Mondion in the early decades of the 1700s were all constructed in this fashion. These included the three gateways of the fortress of Birgu, St Helen Gate at Bormla (Sta Margherita Lines), the two gates of Mdina (Sta Maria Gate & Greeks Gate), and Porta dei Cannoni (Porte des Bombes) in Floriana.

The ‘a’ la Vauban’ drawbridge was a relativelyuncomplicated device. It consisted of a simple, counterbalanced platform (known as the tavolatura) which pivoted roughly about its middle. When raised (i.e., pulled up from the horizontal), it swung downwards inside the gateway’s passage and into an underground chamber, the so-called cantina del ponte levatoio. The tavolatura itself consisted of a stout timber framework which was covered over with wooden planks. The pivoting bar, which was made of iron, was nailed to the bottom of the frawework and fitted into sockets carved out in the sidewalls along the entrance passage way. The original pivoting axle was actually uncovered in situ when the cantina of the drawbridge was excavated and cleared of the rubble that had been dumped into the pit by the British military in the early 20th century.

The photographs show the newly reconstructed drawbridge at Fort Manoel in the retracted vertical position. In such a position, it also served to shelter the wooden gateway itself. In its time, and for everyday use, the drawbridge would have only been retracted halfway up and left at angle of around 45 degrees. The inner half of the platform pivoted downwards into the cantina. This pit was reached through a small side doorway via a flight of steps leading down from the adjoining corpo di guardia. The platform was pulled down by hand by means of metal handles (reconstructed) which were fixed to the inner end of the tavolatura with heavy chains.

Despite the simplicity of the device, these rotating platforms did not prove to be very popular in Malta, for when not properly secured ( they had to be kept in place by a metal poles), they had a tendency to sink into the pit under the weight of those passing over the bridge. One such comic incident, much to the dismay of Grand Master Pinto, involved the Grand Master’s own carriage which sank into the pit at Porta dei Cannoni in 1744. As a result of this accident, the drawbridge was removed but was eventually reinstalled in July 1758. However, it appears that by the end of the eighteenth century, and certainly throughout the nineteenth century, most of the pits of these type of drawbridges had been roofed over with stone arches and paved. The drawbridge of the Birgu main gate is one such documented instance. After 16 years of service, its wooden platform had rotted away, making it quite dangerous to the heavy carriages travelling over it. The chosen solution, rather than having it replaced, was to support it from beneath with a vaulted arch.

The unpopularity of the à la Vauban drawbridge is best reflected by the fact that the last major bastioned fortress to be built in the Maltese islands, Fort Chambrai in Gozo, begun in 1749, was fitted out with the more archaic, but more reliable, type of drawbridge known as à freccie e catene that had been employed in Hospitaller fortifications prior to the arrival of the French military mission in 1715.

The only other drawbridge elements form the eighteenth century still to be found in Malta are the remains of the tavolatura of Porta Reale, Valletta, the wooden tamburi mechanisms of the sally-ports at Fort St Angelo and Fort Ricasoli, and a single iron hinge which once supported the platform of the drawbridge that served the sally-port in the face of St Michael Demi-Bastion in Valletta, which was recently re-discovered by the Restoration Directorate during the restoration works currently underway at Valletta.

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Restoration of St Christopher Bastion, Valletta

The Restoration Directorate in the Ministry for Resources and Rural Affairs recently commenced with the restoration of St Christopher Bastion and its adjoining curtain wall, known as St Lucy Curtain, along the northern end of the Grand Habour enceinte of the historic fortress of Valletta. The works on this bastion, known more popularly as the Lower Barracca Garden, are actually a continuation of another restoration intervention initiated a few years ago on the northern face and salient of the same bastion, just below the World War II Siege Bell Memorial, likewise undertaken by the same directorate.

These restoration and consolidation interventions have long been desired owing to the highly consumed state of preservation of the bastion’s masonry fabric and its highly fissured rock-hewn scarp. Indeed, the south flank and east face of St Christopher Bastion had been declared a dangerous structure some years back, particularly after a small section of the rock-hewn scarp

of the rampart had fallen off onto the vehicular ring road below.

St Christopher Bastion is the northern-most, and largest bastion of the Valletta’s Grand Harbour enceinte. The original bastion, prior to its unfortunate bisection as a result of the construction of Valletta’s ring road, was a stepped, two-tiered platform with its lower ‘piazza bassa’ facing northwords towards the mouth of the Grand Harbour. The work form’s part of Laparelli’s original enceinte and was initially designed to mount a cavalier, although the latter was never built. Laparelli’s initial design also made provisions for small batteries in the flank (piazza basse) but these two were not executed.

The bastion itself, largely rock-hewn, was further stiffened, in the course of the closing decades of the seventeenth century, with a sizeable falsa braga, or faussebraye , by the Flemish military engineer Don Carlos de Grunenberg as part of his scheme to protect the inner reaches of the Grand Harbour with a series of retired sea-level batteries. Unfortunately, the ring road also tore through this feature, denying it to the untrained eye and eating away most of its terrepleined platform, leaving only its outer external masonry shell.

The current restoration interventions, being executed by a private restoration firm under the direction and supervision of the Restoration Directorate, are also aimed at repairing the adjoining St Lucy Curtain, perhaps one of the least noted elements of Valletta'sbastioned enceinte, largely as a result of the fact that most of the façade of the curtain wall is hidden away behind a range of eighteenth century warehouses that were built at the foot of the rampart. This curtain was once decorated with two escutcheons framed within a boxed recess high up in the central area of the wall.

MilitaryArchitecture.com is informed that the shattered remains of large stone escutcheons were recovered from the narrow opening at the foot of the curtain wall behind the warehouses. These will now

be pieced together, restored, and remounted in the original location within the boxed recess found high up in the curtain face.

3D Model of Crac des Chevaliers under constructon

A team from MilitaryArchitecture.com recently visited Syria to gather photographic data of the various masonry textures employed in the ramparts and fortifications of Crac des Chevaliers. This material and information will be used in the con-struction of a detailed three-dimen-sional computer-generated model of this renowned and formidable Hospitaller fortress, currently being put together by Dr Stephen C Spi-teri. When completed, a short video of the model will be featured on the MilitaryArchitecture.com website.

This first model will show Crac des Cheavliers as it stood prior to its capitulation to a Mameluke army in 1271, following a brief but heavily fought out siege. In its present state, Crac des Chevaliers contains vari-ous additions and alterations made by the Saracens following its cap-ture, most of which were completed

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Mameluke army in 1271. Other features on Crusader

castles in Syria will be featured on MilitaryArchitecure.com in a number of forthcoming articles on written and illustrated by Syrian conservation Architect Zeina El Cheikh. Amongst the castles that will be featured are the citadels of Arwad Island, Masyaf , Salah Al-Din, Aleppo, Al-Kahf Kadmous and Tartous, Yahmour Tower and Castel Blanc, Qala't Ousama in Homs and the Hospitaller fortress of Marqab.

Nomination of Marvao for WHL

The municipality of Marvão, in the Province of Alentajo, Portugal, is currently putting together a dossier for the nomination of the mountain-fortress of Marvão as a world herit-age site.

This is the second time that such an application is being sub-mitted, as the first attempt in 2000, was refused by UNESCO in 2005. However, undaunted by the initial negative response, Marvão authori-ties are determined to reapply as they strongly believe that the fortified town and its castle deserve this rec-ognition as an outstanding example of a unique cultural landscape, the product of an extraordinary combi-nation of man-made and natural fea-tures working together in the service of defence.

This renewed nomination attempt has been the subject of a special international symposium organized by the municipality of Marvão enti-

by around 1285 and later in the early fourteenth century.

The diversity of stone types as well as the varied dimensions, tex-tures, and finishing of the masonry elements employed in the construc-tion of Crac des Chevaliers make this castle a richly-woven composite structure. The different materials and masonry styles employed in its construction also enable architec-tural historians to piece together an understanding of the chronological development and phasing of the castle’s structure over its long his-tory.

Crac des Chevaliers stands on a bare black-basalt hill above the Homs Gap, an important pass through which runs the road from Tripoli to Homs, some 35 km from the Mediterranean and about 650 m above sea-level. In its day it com-manded a position of great strategic importance as it looked out over a fertile plain to the east and, as a result, was occupied even before the Crusades by a Kurdish gar-rison, hence its earlier name Hosn al-Akrad, the stronghold of the Kurds. The Franks first appeared in the vicinity of the castle in the first week of January 1099. The Muslim peasants of the surround-ing districts sought refuge, together with their livestock and cattle, within Hosn al-Akrad. The crusaders under Raymond de Saint-Gilles immedi-ately set about attacking the castle and scaling its walls. Fearing that all was lost, the peasants threw open the castle doors and allowed part of their herd of cattle to escape. The Franks, forgetting the battle at this opportunity for plunder, hurled themselves after the cattle. Seeing the ensuing confusion, the defend-ers made a sortie and attacked the Christian camp and nearly captured the Frankish commander. That same night, taking advantage of the darkness, the Saracens slipped noiselessly away and in the follow-ing morning the Franks found an empty fortress. For several days in February 1099, the Franks used the stronghold as their headquarters but it was only permanently occu-pied by the Christians in 1110 when

Tancred, prince of Antioch, took it for the benefit of the Pons of Tripoli. Then in 1142 Raymond I, count of Tripoli, ceded it to the Hospitallers in whose hands it remained until it was lost to Baybars in 1271. The Hospitallers made Crac the centre of their network of castles and towers in Tripoli and entirely remodelled it over the years.

The present-day concentric castle is much different from the eleventh-century stronghold when it was first acquired by the Order. In all, one can distinguish four major building phases in the expansion and remodelling of the castle. The earliest phase corresponds to the pre-crusader fortress, the Kurd-ish Hosn al-Akard, of which very little survives. The second phase involves the early crusader recon-struction of the castle and most of this can be found incorporated into the walls of the inner ward. He French historian Deschamps was able to distinguish the oldest parts of the castle by studying the various methods employed in the dressing of masonry. The oldest form was the drafted masonry found mostly on the walls of the inner ward which once formed part of the eleventh-century crusader castle.

Throughout the twelfth and thirteenth centuries Crac des Cheva-liers served as a headquarters from where Hospitaller knights control-led their territories and strongholds and also as a base for conducting their raids into enemy territories. This ‘key to the Christian Lands’ was considered to be ‘the greatest and strongest of the castles of the Hospitallers, exceedingly injuri-ous to the Saracens’ owing to its aggressive garrison which fulfilled the Hospitaller policy of unrelent-ing razzie into neighbouring Mus-lim lands. Increasingly during the thirteenth century, Crac and its sister fortress of Marqab began to attract the attentions of the Muslims. As a result, Hospitaller territories were repeatedly attacked and many of the Order’s subjects were carried off into slavery. Crac itself was besieged by large Saracen armies in 1207, 1218, and 1265 and finally fell to a large

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tled ‘Il Forum Marvão’ and held at Marvão on 25 September 2010. The conference was addressed by HE Dr. Ray Bondin, Malta’s ambassador to UNESCO and Honorary President of the International Committee of Historic Towns and Villages (CIV-VIH), who stressed the importance of Marvão as an outstanding exam-ple of a unique cultural landscape. Dr. Bondin stated that the nomina-tion of Marvão as a world heritage site will help to enrich the typological

diversity of the fortified settlements that already form part of the world heritage list. Other speakers at the conference were Prof. Michele Bilancia (Italy), Prof. Javier Riv-era Blanco (Spain), Prof. Jorge de Oliveira (Portugal), Eng. Francisco Sousa Lobo (Portugal) and Dr. Stephen Spiteri (Malta).

The fortified town of Marvão is lo-cated in the Province of Alto Alentejo in the District of Portalegre, Serra de São Mamede Natural Park, next to the border with Spain. The fortress sits on the crest mountainous range at an altitude of 867m ( 39° 23’ 40.2” N /007° 22’ 31.7” W). The fortress is located within a special legal protec-tion zone (since 1960) and occupies 76 hectares of land, protected by a buffer zone of 307 hectares.

The fortress consists of a com-plex medieval castle and an ad-joining fortified town. Both exploit the natural defensive advantages offered by the terrain of high craggy mountain cliffs on which they are built. The fortifications have a direct important relationship with the sur-rounding landscape, and are insepa-rable from the rocky mass on which they stand.

An equally outstanding quality of the site is the fact that it has been lived in uninterruptedly since it was first established as fortified settle-ment in the early middle ages as well as the fact that the site retained its strategic value as a frontier posi-tion until well into the nineteenth century. Both the fortifications and urban elements are extremely well

preserved and present a distinctive typology of structures combining architectural, historical, and natural elements into a well knit defensive entity.

The fortress of Marvão occupied an important strategic position along the long Portuguese-Spanish border and, as such, witnessed most of the wars fought by Portugal against its foreign enemies. The fortress formed the lynchpin of the extensive network of strongholds controlling the border passes. The castle, which occupies the highest part of the rocky crag, dates from the Moorish occupation of the site and consists of various wards stiffened with rectangular towers, barbicans and a keep.

The first documented references to the castle go back to the ninth century AD. The fortified town first received its status as a municipal-ity by royal charter in 1226 and the enclosure continued to grow until it eventually occupied most of the mountain top to form the present day configuration.

The medieval enceinte was stiffened in the gunpowder era with small bastions and counterguards. The ramparts and bastions are built from a combination of granite and quartz stones, heavily bonded in lime mortar with some later ele-ments, such as the echaugettes and gun ports, built of clay bricks.

From a military-architecture point of view the fortress of Marvão com-bines a fascinating blend of medi-eval, renaissance and early-modern defence solutions, all exploiting the advantages offered by a mountain-ous terrain. The fortified enceinte is largely still complete and in a very good state of preservation and presentation.

The fortress has benefitted greatly from the local community’s dedicated efforts and restoration interventions, all of which have been carried out with a great degree of sensitivity and skill. Visually, Mar-vão, presents one of the most dra-matic and formidable combination of man-made and natural defensive features.


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Vauban's influence throughout the world

On the occasion of the third anniversary of the World Heritage nomination of Vauban’s fortifications, the Vauban Network and the Arras Urban Area have together organized an International Study Day concerning Vauban’s influence throughout the world. The international seminar, entitled VAUBAN’S INFLUENCE TROUGHOUT THE WORLD was held at the citadel of Arras on 7th July 2011. Various historians of military architecture from around the world discussed the impact of Vauban’s methods in different regions of the world as well as the influence on his contemporary engineers, and the ways in which the treaties on fortification spread out his ideas.

The programme of talks included the following presentations:Philip Bragart: The small leaflets of the end of the 17th century turning Vauban’s fortifications into public science.

Nicolas Kopaney: The edition of Vauban’s treatise of 1737Francisco Munzo Espejo: The influence of Vauban’s treatises on New Spain’s 18th and 19th century fortifications (Mexico)Michele Virol: Vauban’s influence on Protestant engineers in England and IrelandPierre Cloutier: Jacques Levausseur de Nere’s work in the city of QuebecVictoria Sanger: Vauban’s influence on the thirteen British colonies in the colonial and revolutionary periodGilles-Antoine Langlois: Vauban’s invisible thread in LouisianaStephen C Spiteri & Hermann Bonnici: A la Vauban – French military architecture in 18th century MaltaDaria Chemelina: Vauban’s ideas put into practice in 18th century Siberian urban planningTsutomu Takashima: Franco-Japanese relations in the 19th century.

The seminar was chaired by Michele Virol and presidents of the three main sessions were Alan Montferrand, Philip Bragart, and Philip Prost.

The seminar was well held in the Citadel of Arras, one of the many fortresses designed and built by Sebastien le Prestre de Vauban attended, was well attended with

partipants from various continents.

The Vauban NetworkThe Network of Major Vauban

Sites was created in March 2005. It is an Association which unites 12 sites fortified by Vauban and inscribed on the World Heritage List. The President is Jean-Louis Fousseret, the Mayor-President of the Greater Besançon area, and the aim of the Network is to co-ordinate actions in favour of the conservation, management and enhancement of this outstanding architectural, urban and landscape heritage, to encourage the development of an efficient network, pooling experience in the areas of maintenance, restoration, conservation, and enhancement and organising tourist and cultural events for the Vauban sites and to develop a resource centre on an international level dealing with the management of Vauban’s fortified heritage.

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WWII Pillbox discovered at St Paul’s Bay

A World War II concrete machine gun post, or pillbox, has been accidentally unearthed at St Paul’s Bay, in the north of Malta in June 2011. Workers carrying out road improvements near the Sirens water-polo pitch came across the small concrete structure buried immediatly under the modern road. The structure was found in a relatively good state of repair. Local residents remember that the pillbox was still visible in the decades after the war and was only buried beneath the present modern road sometime during the early 1960s.

The concrete pillbox, or beachpost as it was also called, was of the type built prior to, or immediately at the onset of the Second War War as part of the anti-invasion defences prepared by the British military then fearing an Italian invasion. The structure can be dated to the early phase of pillbox building by its features which include concrete machinegun tables and semi-circular benches. Similar examples, can be found around many of the bays and other landing places around the northern shores of Malta, where many similar

structures were also encased in a rubble-stone type of camouflage designed to mimic nearby fieldwalls and blend the structure into the landscape. The newly discovered pillbox still retains its armoured entrance hatch, originally a pair of steel shutters cannibalized from the ammunition cubicle serving one of the island’s outdated coastal gun emplacements.

Another well-preserved camouflaged concrete pillbox to be found at St Paul’s Bay is situated close to the primary school in the area known as Ta’ Tabibu. Originally

known as P.4, its construction was authorized on 15 October 1938.

Official records in the Public Works Department reveal that St Paul’s Bay was defended by a large number of pillboxes (designated P1 to p14 – these designations changed during the course of the War). P14 was situated at Qawra and P2 at Mistra. Bugibba and Qawra positions were later designated with the letter ‘K’.

The unearthed pillbox was designated P9 and was one of four defensive positions which were erected to defend the bay, two of which, where improvised positions built with sandbags. The second beachpost, which was smaller, was designated P8. Period photographs of the bay also show it to have been heavily defended by multiple bands of barbed-wire entanglements planted around the rocky foreshore.

The find was reported to the authorities responsible for heritage preservation and to the Local Council of St. Paul’s Bay. MilitaryArchitecture.com augurs that the rediscovered pillbox will now be incorporated into the landscaping project currently underway along the promenade in order that this new find can be added to the many other military architecture features of towers, batteries, redoubts, and entrenchments that can be seen in the locality.


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Restoration of Victoria Gate, Valletta by VRP

Victoria Gate, in Valetta, was giv-en a faceover during the course of 2010. The works were undertaken by the Valletta Rehabilitation Office witihin the Restoration Directorate and involved the restoration of the facade and vaulted passageways as well as the partial excavation of the ditch in front of the gate which had been covered over and hidden by the modern road. The excavation of the new ditch revealed a forgotten architectural feature of the facade in the rusticated hardstone base.

Victoria Gate replaced an earlier Hospitaller period gateway known as Del Monte Gate, the sea-gate of the Valletta, and one of the three main entrances into the city.

Books

Systems and Schools of Bulwarked Fortification adopted in ElvasD. Bucho (Lisbon, 2011)

This current work - prefaced by H.E. Dr. Ray Bondin - is the result of thorough technical research of the systems and schools of bulwarked fortifications adopted in Elvas (17th-19th centuries). The author brings to light the essential heritage values which he uses to justify the nomina-tion of this city to World Heritage (UNESCO). b/w, 176 pp 230 x 160mm

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ilitaryarchitecture.comThe Art of Fortress Building in Hospitaller Malta Stephen C. Spiteri (Malta, 2008)

This study that seeks to examine the manner in which the Knights of the Order of St. John and their military engineers went about designing, building, repairing, and arming their defensive works throughout the 268 years of their rule over the Maltese islands. This book seeks to provide an insight into the engineering, architectural, and organizational aspects of fortification projects within the Maltese and Hospitaller contexts, examining the nature of the local building materials, tools, and techniques, the minutiae of design and construction, the execution of works, and the type of technical and administrative problems that military engineers had to contend with in the implementation of fortress schemes. The study follows the construction of a complex work of fortification through its many stages, from the moment it was conceived during the deliberations of the Order’s Council down to the finishing of its barrack fixtures and its provisioning with weapons and munitions. It also looks at the organization of the workforce and the fortification atelier, and examines the roles of military engineers, commissioners,

surveyors, draughtsmen, master-masons, and the many skilled craftsmen and labourers employed on a fortress construction site. A crucial aspect of this research work has been the effort to see how the knights themselves recorded such activities and draws heavily on the rich archives of the Order of St. John – engineers’ and commissioners’ reports, architectural plans, building contracts, minutes of the meetings of the Order’s Council and the Congregation of War and Fortification, testimonials, notarial deeds, etc. The text is complemented by hundreds of illustrations, photographs, plans, sketches, and many graphic reconstructions drawn by the author specifically for this publication.


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A Chapel on the Ramparts

Arch. Edward Said

The Chapel of St Roche on St Michael Counterguard along the land front of Valletta’s bastioned enceinte.

Perched next to one of the echauguettes on St Michael Counterguard stand the remains of a building which once assumed a role far removed from its military surroundings. Until the middle of the 17th century, the presence of a quarantine establishment on Il-Gzira ta’ l-Isqof (today Manoel Island) was merely a temporary facility. In1643 Grand Master Lascaris embarked on a vigorous overhaul of this important institution, constructing a complex of purpose-built edifices serviced with all amenities in order to ensure minimal contact with the outside world. The Lazzaretto, as it came to be known, housed both patients afflicted with various contagious dis-eases as well as visitors to Malta un-dergoing a period of isolation before being given a clean bill of health.

To provide for the spiritual duties of the contumanianti without them having to leave their designated quarters, a chapel was built across Marsamxett Harbour in a strategi-cally chosen lofty position atop Valletta’s outerworks from where Holy Mass was celebrated.1 It was constructed by Lascaris simultane-ously with the new Lazzaretto on the isoletto in1643. It was appropriately dedicated to St Roche, patron saint of the plague-afflicted. Interestingly various texts make reference to a Chiesetta dedicata a’ S. Rocco. 2

Inside the Lazzaretto itself besides

that on St Michael Counterguard 3 and is also marked on an old plan of the complex. Whether such a building existed still remains to be confirmed. Soon after the construc-tion of the quarantine buildings, plague broke out first in 1655 and then in 1675-76 when Malta suffered its worst recorded epidemic, leaving thousands dead in its wake. Popular devotion to St Roche is particularly evident in the significant amount of chapels and shrines dedicated to him around the Maltese Islands. His feast day celebrated on the 16th August was for a long time solemnly celebrated.

In 1809 a titular painting by the Maltese artist Gaetano Calleja (1760-1838) was commissioned for the chapel. 4 The distance across the water meant that celebration of Holy Mass was difficult making more of an intentional rather a deeply con-gregational affair.5 Blessed Cardinal J.H. Newman staying at the Lazaret-to in 1832 wrote the following: “This morning we saw a poor fellow in the

lazaret close to us, cut off from the ordinance of his church, saying his prayers with his face to the house of God in his sight over the water”.6

A number of letters found at the National Archives describe how in the latter decades of the 19th cen-tury, the chapel was used only on certain occasions and was run by the Capuchin Friars of Floriana on commission by the colonial govern-ment.7

The friars would carry all sacred items with them whenever they celebrated Mass there and would access the building after obtain-ing a special permit from military authorities. 8 St Roche’s remained in use until the 1930s. The present author interviewed one Ms Bianca Rizzo residing at the Lazzaretto and who distinctly recalls Mass being celebrated for all Roman Catho-lics. Someone on one of the roofs would be carefully observing the priest across the water, shouting out to the rest of the inmates when to respond, stand or get down on their


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knees. 9The chapel was demolished during World War Two most likely as a result of one of the countless raids aimed at the submarine base then housed in the Lazzaretto, then known as H.M.S. Talbot.

The architecture of this chapel was almost as austere as the Laz-zaretto itself. On plan it essentially consisted of one chamber having a somewhat trapezoidal shape. The room was roofed with the stand-ard wooden beams and softstone roofing slabs. Access inside was through a doorway on the side facing the echauguette. No form of decoration was apparent on the inner three elevations however the fourth one, facing Marsamxett was quite unusual as far as chapels go in Malta. In order to be adequately visible from the Lazzaretto, the façade was designed around a large arched opening through which the celebrant would be clearly discern-ible. The altar was set on the back wall but squarely framed in the window and was sculpted, depicting the eight-pointed cross at its centre, much of which still survives today.10 The design of the altar is not unlike those found in the crypts beneath the chapels at Forts Ricasoli and Manoel. The façade was sur-

mounted by an ornate cornice and topped with a bell cote at the centre, crowned also with a large eight-pointed cross, similar to St Anne’s Chapel at Fort St Angelo.

After the war, the altar was reassembled and parts of the ruins consolidated however much of the rubble was left strewn around the site. There was however a serious intention to reinstate the edifice. The National Museum of Archaeology in Valletta has in its possession a dos-sier in which one finds photographs of St Roche’s taken before the war as well as close-up images taken after the bombing. In the same file are detailed architectural drawings, including plans, elevations and a section for a proposed reconstruc-tion, dated 1954. For some reason the project never materialised.

Such a scheme should be re-suscitated as these drawings were clearly very accurately prepared af-ter the original structure was meticu-lously studied. Besides these docu-ments, plenty of photographs and paintings are available to enable a faithful replica of this lost landmark. Rebuilding it would complement well the Lazzaretto complex which will be restored shortly and maintain a sense on consistency with the ongo-

ing extensive restoration of Fort Ma-noel with its recently rebuilt chapel of St Anthony of Padua, which was also blitzed during the war. Further-more, in all the kilometres of Hospi-taller fortifications that the Maltese Islands boast a building such as St Roche’s Chapel which was designed to serve a specific purpose and site is unique and thus its reconstruction is highly desirable.

Acknowledgements: National Museum of Archaeology, Heritage Malta; National Archives of Malta, Rabat; aoM Parntership, Manoel Island; Mr Winston L. Zammit

Endnotes.1. Bussolin, G., Delle Istituzioni di Sanita’ Marittima nel Bacino del Mediterraneo, (Trieste 1881), 272.2. Abela, G. F., Della Descrittione di Malta, (Malta 1647), 27.3. Ferris, A., Descrizione Storico delle Chiese di Malta e Gozo, (Malta1866), 246.4. Castagna, P.P., Lis Storia ta Malta bil Gzejer Tahha, (Malta 1888), 19.5. Ibid.6. Cassar, P., Medical History of Malta, (London 1964), p. 3037. National Archives of Malta, various letters identified, compiled and researched by Mr Winston L. Zammit8. Ibid.9. Personal communication with Ms Bianca Rizzo, daughter of Lazaretto chief of police and resident there from 1923 to 1937, (18th January, 2009)10. Noted from photographs at the National Museum of Archeology, Valletta.


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The importance and role of coastal defence in the Maltese islands during the first half of the nineteenth century, under British rule, has not attracted much scholarly attention from historians and researchers of military architecture.

The vast system of coastal towers and fortifications built by the knights of St John, which the British military inherited on the occupation of the island in 1800, meant that the heavy British investment in coastal towers in Britain and Ireland, which began from around the time of the Napoleonic wars onwards, was not repeated in Malta.

Initially the network of coastal towers, batteries, redoubts, and entrenchments which the British had inherited in 1800 was retained in service, even though the Hospitaller strategy of an island-wide coastal defence had been totally discredited during the French invasion of 1798. Eventually, however, it was realized that most of these coastal works were not strong enough to withstand bombardment, and, as many of the structures decayed with time, there appeared even suggestions recommending the demolition of the seventeenth and eighteenth century defences in order to prevent them, in the event of an invasion, from falling into enemy hands and enable them to afford cover and protection,

facilitating the debarkation of troops. As early as 1828, the future of the Hospitaller’s coastal works as part of the island’s defence was already being held in doubt and in 1832 Col. Morshead, then commanding the Royal Engineers in Malta, actually proposed that 15 towers and 25 coastal redoubts be abandoned and demolished, ‘and the ground levelled’. By that time, if we are to believe Col. Morshead, most of the structures had long since

been unutilized, their masonry in a dilapidated condition and their woodwork, where not decayed, being ‘in many instance either stolen or carried away’.

Since Hospitaller towers were conceived primarily as lookout posts rather than as batteries or gun emplacements, they were never designed to receive heavy coastal artillery. Consequently, the British military could not employ them actively in the defence of the Island’s shores in the same way that they had employed the purposely-built Martello gun- towers in Britain and in some of its colonies. Moreover, most of the Maltese towers were too small to accommodate sizeable complements of men required to work the guns and defend the batteries. Indeed, whilst still in use, the British fitted many of the small towers with external cookhouses and ablution rooms. One such cookhouse has survived at Lippija Tower.

Despite the early efforts made to study the possibility of strengthening the De Redin and Lascaris Towers, the majority of the Knights coastal defences (including many of the

Madliena TowerMalta’s ‘Martello’ Tower

Dr Stepen C. Spiteri Ph.D.


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towers) were being abandoned by 1832 and decommissioned. Among the towers which were retained for use was Madliena Tower (Spelt Madalena by the British). This tower, one of thirteen built by Grand Master Martin de Redin in 1658-59, was the only Hospitaller tower which the British military sought to modify to fulfil a similar active coast defence role to that of the Martello towers built around the shores of Britain and other parts of the empire. This largely involved the heightening and strengthening of the parapet and the construction of a circular emplacement for a single central pivot mounted traversing carriage on the roof of the structure. It is not yet clear when these modifications were undertaken but the fact that the tower plugs in an important gap between Fort Madalena and Fort Pembroke tends to indicate an attempt to strengthen that weak link in the North West Front, possibly in the late 1860s /early 1870s. It is not yet clear, either, if the tower was actually fitted with a cannon. For one thing, it does not feature on any of the approved armament lists for the nineteenth century (see D.

Detail of Madliena (Madalena) Tower from 19th century Record Plan (Author’s Collection)


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Rollo, Guns and Gunners of Malta – Malta, 1999), while the lack of gun mounting fixtures tend to indicate that the gun was never mounted. An external cookhouse, with adjoining w.c. compartment, was also fitted to the tower, but this seems to actually date to an early period prior to the conversion of the tower. No traces

Heightened and thickened parapet of Madliena Tower, showing circular stairway shaft as rebuilt by British military

Author's graphic reconstruction of Madliena Tower (Copyright, Stephen C Spiteri 2010).


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of this cookhouse survive today, but it is shown in at least two record plans, and was already in ruins by 1908.

The Martello Towers

Martello towers were relatively small but sturdy and solidly-built coastal towers erected in Britain and several outposts of the British Empire during the nineteenth century, from around the time of the Napoleonic Wars onwards. Around 140 were built during the first half of the 19th century to guard the British and Irish coastlines, and others were erected in Australia, Barbuda, Bermuda, British Virgin Islands, Canada, Jamaica, Mauritius, Sierra Leone,

Typical layout of Martello Tower


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Detail from Record Plan of Madalena Tower 2-12 Pdr. QF Battery for Night Practice (signed 2.1.0.1909) .Right, Platform and metal hold fast for pedestal of 12-pdr QF gun at Madliena Battery.


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South Africa, Sri Lanka, and Trinidad & Tobago. The United States government also copied the idea and built several similar structures along the east coast of the America, based on the British design.

The Martello Tower’s round structure, thick walls of solid masonry, and low height (12m - 40 feet) made them highly resistant to the impact of iron shot fired from smooth-bore muzzle-loading guns of the period and also an ideal platform for heavy artillery pieces sited strategically around the coastline close to the shore. Inspired by a round fortress, part of a larger Genoese defence system, at Mortella Point (Myrtle) in Corsica - hence the name - Martello towers usually mounted one or two cannon (larger ones such as that

at Slaughden, Suffolk, held up to four guns) on central pivot rotating carriages able to traverse through a 360° arc of fire. Internally the typical British Martello tower consisted of three storeys (sometimes with an additional basement). The ground floor was reserved for the storage of ammunition and provisions, while the garrison lived on the first floor, divided into several rooms with separate quarters for officers and men, having built-in fireplaces for cooking and heating. A cistern at the bottom of the structure within the fort supplied the garrison with water. A few towers were also surrounded by moats for added defence.

Around the Empire, the construction of Martello towers continued until as late as the 1870s but was thereafter abandoned once

it became clear that these structures could no longer withstand the new and more-powerful generation of rifled artillery weapons.

From Tower to Battery

Record plans signed by Col E.H. Hemming, CRE West Sub District, show that an area close to Madliena Tower was turned into a two 12-pdr QF gun Night Practice Battery in 1908. The work was completed in March 1909 for the sum of £ 99.17.2. The original authorization had been for an expenditure of £170, which sum was to include an emplacement for two 6-inch Mk VII guns, but this was cancelled in April 1909. The battery’s Direction Range Finder was mounted on the roof of the adjoining tower.

A few remains of this battery, such as the two metal gun-pedestal hold-fasts and cuttings in the rock can still be seen. The battery was fitted with two small store rooms, capable of housing 300 cartridges and 200 shells respectively. According to Rollo, the two 12-pdr QF guns were still there in the 1920s when they were used by the Royal Malta Artillery for practice (Rollo, 376).

The tower was pressed briefly back into service during WWII when it was fitted with an adjoining covered concrete emplacement apparently for a beach gun, while a 90cm (3 degree) Defence Electric Light (search light) is listed as mounted there in 1935.

Sources:D. Rollo, The Guns and Gunners of Malta (Malta, 1999)Martello Towers Homepage http://www.martello-towers.co.uk/bibliography/books.htmS. Sutcliffe, Martello Towers (Devon, 1972).Stephen C Spiteri, British Military Architecture in Malta (Malta, 1996)


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Even for international specialists, the first visit to Elvas (Portugal) is almost always a surprise.

How is it possible to find, in the 21st century – after the autophagic urban growth of the 19th and 20th centuries – an entrenched field of fortifications so old, so large (Fig. 1), so well preserved, so authentic, with such an important intangible cultural heritage (representing schools of fortification; already considered as a masterpiece in its time – Fort of Graça; with such a long military his-tory, etc.) but…one not included in the World Heritage List?

In fact, Elvas is the main for-tress of the oldest border in Europe, the “Key to the Kingdom”, and the “mother” of the largest ensemble of modern fortifications ever built any-where, by any country, in the world; incidentally, this is why Portuguese is today the most widely spoken lan-guage in the Southern Hemisphere. From the 15th century on, and because of the Discoveries, Portugal constructed thousands of transitional and bulwarked (bastioned) fortifica-tions on all the continents, some of them already classified as World Heritage, like Mazagan, El Jadida

(Morocco, 16th century); Fort of São Sebastião, Mozambique Island (Mozambique, 16th century); Gale (Sri Lanka, 16th century). They are so many and so dispersed all over the world that it has not yet been possible to count them precisely. Just to mention Brazil, there are 100 fortifications (or significant vestiges) still in existence out of the 174 built by Portugal.

But the role of Portugal during the Discoveries and the Renais-sance, in other words, in the Mod-ern Age, contributed to a new and enlightened vision of the World and Humanity (in every sense: geo-graphical, cultural, etc.), this would not have been possible without the defence of its independence, face to face, side by side, with the power-ful country/empire in Europe at the time: Spain. In this respect, Elvas played an important role ever since the independence of Portugal (1143) and the establishment of its defini-tive border at the Treaty of Alcañices (1297). That is why Elvas was the “Key to the Kingdom” throughout the centuries, exhibiting, today, Medie-

The fortress of Elvas, PortugalNominated for World HeritageStatus

Prof. Domingos Bucho


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val fortifications (Muslim and Chris-tian), transitional fortified elements, the strategic Amoreira Aqueduct (7.504 m in length), the modern fortifications built in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries and so many military buildings in the Historic Centre that make Elvas a unique garrison border town. If the soldiers of dozens of regiments came back, it would be amazing, because they would not notice any change in the fortifications. Of what other impor-tant fortified towns in the world can the same be said?

For all these reasons, it is a duty to preserve this “outstanding exam-ple of a type of building, architec-tural or technological ensemble or landscape which illustrates signifi-cant stages in human history”, just to mention one of UNESCO’s criteria that can be attributed to this cultural heritage. The dossier is complete and is the work (and has benefited from the advice) of important spe-cialists from all continents.

Forte de Graca, Elvas.

Forte de Sta. Luzia, Elvas.


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arx journal volume 8

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