Bringing back the cathedral's beauty

The Prime Minister will this evening inaugurate a project in St John's Co-Cathedral that will help us to understand the beauty of our cathedral as it was in the past and hope that it will be again one day.

The Cappella d'Italia project has been in the making two years. It is one of two projects currently being done by the Valletta Rehabilitation Project within the Ministry of Resources and Infrastructure in the cathedral. VRP were responsible for planning and executing the project. As the cathedral is now managed by the St John's Co-Cathedral Foundation the project was done with their collaboration and with that of the Metropolitan Cathedral Chapter.

Through this project we can see the original colours once more of the surface area under the gold gilded area and of the zoccolo. We can see the beauty of the marble, bronze and wooden statues. We can see the beauty of the two enormous lunettes and another restored painting.

The project is the result of nine months of intensive planning in which we consulted Italian experts, through the Istituto Centrale per il Restauro and also a team of four that made up the international scientific committee that reported to VRP. These discussions were held of course also with the curator at the time, Daniela Apap Bologna, and the art historian Keith Sciberras, as well as Sante Guido, who proposed the project, and the head of the Italian restoration team, Giuseppe Mantella.

These discussions were very extensive and exhaustive and paved the way for all the work that has been done.

A group of VRP workers led by Mikiel Vella and Frans Agius also assisted the Italians all the time. The St John's marble restorers also assisted us throughout. Their work was essential for the success of the project.

The chapel can now be seen in all its incredible beauty. The sculptured surfaces stand out as they were originally planned. The artifacts have been given their original beauty. In fact all that needed to be done in the chapel was done.

We are very proud of what has been achieved. We now look forward to other projects that will continue to give back the original beauty of the cathedral. This is an outstanding cathedral that deserves the maximum of attention by all of us. One hopes that after today's inauguration and tomorrow's technical seminar [12 noon to 1 p.m., open to all] more would appreciate the intense work that went into this project and would appreciate the cathedral more.