Heritage chief: Do not confuse UNESCO fortifications bid with Valletta reporting
Culture Superintendent says upcoming mission has nothing to do with capital's state of conservation
The Superintendent of Cultural Heritage has warned against confusing Malta’s bid to add its Knights-era fortifications to the UNESCO World Heritage List with a separate ongoing review of Valletta’s state of conservation.
Kurt Farrugia said the technical experts due in Malta next week are not coming to carry out a State of Conservation mission on Valletta, but to assess Malta’s nomination The Maltese Fortifications of the Knights of St John.
That nomination seeks to extend World Heritage recognition to a wider fortified landscape, including Valletta’s fortifications, the Cottonera Lines, the Santa Margherita Lines, Mdina and the Cittadella in Gozo.
His comments come after Flimkien għal Ambjent Aħjar warned that proposed developments around Valletta, including a planned Sliema lido and floodlit padel courts on Manoel Island, could affect the assessment of Malta’s bid.
Farrugia said FAA’s intervention risked giving the public a misleading impression of what the visiting mission was meant to do.
The experts that will be visiting Malta, he said, are from ICOMOS, the International Council on Monuments and Sites, a professional body that advises UNESCO on World Heritage matters. Their visit will focus on the merits of Malta’s nomination dossier, including its claimed outstanding universal value, authenticity, integrity, management framework and protection measures.
“It is not a reactive mission sent to investigate the current state of conservation of Valletta,” Farrugia said.
He said the distinction was important because two separate UNESCO processes were being conflated.
The first, he said, is the evaluation of Malta’s fortifications nomination. The second is the State of Conservation reporting process concerning Valletta, which has been on the World Heritage List since 1980.
Farrugia said no one disputed that Valletta faced conservation challenges that required serious discussion. An updated State of Conservation report, building on one submitted in 2023, is being compiled with input from heritage authorities and other organisations and is expected to be sent to UNESCO later this year.
But he insisted that the process was already underway and was separate from next week’s ICOMOS visit.
“The ICOMOS experts arriving next week are evaluating Malta’s bid to extend World Heritage recognition to the wider system of the Knights’ fortifications. They are not arriving to conduct a State of Conservation mission on Valletta,” he said.
Farrugia said the fortifications nomination was the result of years of work by several institutions and professionals, including the Superintendence of Cultural Heritage, Heritage Malta, the Restoration Directorate, the Planning Authority, local councils, historians, architects, archaeologists and conservation specialists.
He also pointed to the National World Heritage Technical Committee, formally established under the Cultural Heritage Act, which is tasked with advising the government on World Heritage Sites and coordinating the entities responsible for their management.
Public debate on heritage protection was legitimate and necessary, Farrugia said, but had to be based on accurate information.
“Both are important. Neither should be confused with the other,” he said.