In an article published on October 16, much praise was made of the project being done at Fort St Elmo after many years of neglect that has seen the fort deteriorate from the days when it was perfectly looked after by the Royal Malta Artillery to the state it is today. Certainly, this project has long been overdue and, though small parts of it were looked after in recent years, most of the fort was badly in need of attention.

Much has been written about keeping minor details like graffiti, certainly extremely important, and the discovery of new underground tunnels, and so on.

However, someone who has always believed that conservation works in historic places is a very delicate balance that must preserve l’esprit des lois, that is, the spirit of the place, would be shocked when seeing what the loggia around the Piazza d’Armi looks like after restoration.

I do hope that this is not the kind of treatment that has been given to other parts of the fort. What I see in the picture that accompanied the said article is not conservation. It is not restoration either. It is a modern rendering of a centuries-old fort made out to look completely new.

Restoration is not a modern rendering of a centuries-old fort made out to look completely new

The effort of a conservation project is to ensure that the fort retains the ‘spirit’ of a historic building. It is a very delicate balance between preserving the past and modernising only when necessary and in a manner that still does not kill the original spirit of the place. Certainly, it should not be made to look like it was built yesterday.

This attitude is not limited to Fort St Elmo. While the country has continued to take care of long-neglected heritage, and this is very welcome in itself, a lot of the results are a pastiche of what we think the heritage should look like. It is not preserving the past.

The case of Fort St Elmo is very typical. What is important is to make it economically sustainable today. A fort that in all its splendour should have been admired for what it is, because it is truly a very incredible fort, had to be modernised for the modern tourist. Thus, one of the first priorities planned, though I do not know whether it has been done as I do not have access to the fort, was an elevated walkway on the outer rim, which would give the visitor not a good view of the fort but, rather, of Tigné and the sea below.

The comments on the project made by Heritage Advisory Committee were mostly ignored.

I have no doubt that not only has the Piazza d’Armi now have a loggia that seems as if it were built today but will also be paved in a way that does not reflect what it used to look like. Surely, the modern concrete ground should go but will the new paving reflect the terra battuta that it was originally covered with? Certainly not. We will pave it to make it convenient for modern usage.

Of course, the War Museum (this name makes no sense in 2013) needs to be enlarged and I welcome the use of the fort to increase museum space.

Certainly, a museum today must have good facilities and an environment, inside, that is suitable for the exhibition of artefacts. However, on the outside, the fort should have retained the original spirit of a very old and important fortress.

Ray Bondin is a former Maltese Ambassador to Unesco.