Historic Spinola Townhouse Lovingly Embraced by New Five-Storey Block
The 19th-century façade has been carefully dismantled and re-erected on a fashionable new alignment, where it now enjoys the warm embrace of several extra storeys.
Great news for heritage lovers. Spinola Bay’s beloved old townhouse will never be alone again.
For more than a century, a graceful 19th-century townhouse stood watching over the boats of Spinola Bay, exposed to the elements and, worse, to open sky on all sides. Those lonely days are over. A handsome new five-storey development has stepped in to wrap the old building in a generous, permanent embrace, sparing it the burden of ever being looked at on its own again.
A hug, in concrete
Lesser countries leave their historic buildings standing about awkwardly in the open. Malta prefers to integrate them. Here the townhouse is no longer merely next to progress; it is held by it, swaddled on three sides and crowned with four further floors, like a much-loved heirloom finally given the display case it deserves. The turret, once a proud silhouette against the sky, now enjoys the cosy intimacy of a stairwell.
The façade goes on tour
In a daring feat of conservation, the cherished frontage was carefully dismantled and re-erected on a brand-new building alignment, a few considerate steps from where it had loitered for 150 years. It is, in the truest sense, a Magritte: a façade of a townhouse that is no longer a townhouse, hung on the front of something else entirely. Ceci n’est pas a townhouse. Purists call it facadism. We call it giving the old girl a change of scene.
It complements the area
Officials confirm the scheme is a “comprehensive design” whose overlying floors “complement the immediate area,” sit comfortably within the height limitation, and closely resemble the adjacent plots, which is to say they are also tall, also grey, and also there. The whole arrangement is secured by a bank guarantee, the warmest expression of love known to Maltese planning.
A photograph of the embrace recently caused a small stir online, with unkind words like “grotesque” and “uglification” thrown around by people who simply do not understand a hug when they see one. Come to Spinola Bay and judge for yourself, while there is still something to judge. The townhouse is in there somewhere, what remains of it, and it has never felt so held.
