Malta enjoys the comfort of blaming the war for the loss of many of its early landmarks. Gozo can hide behind no such excuses. World War II spared Gozo the relentless devastation it inflicted on Malta. What harm the natural and man-made environment of Gozo suffered either lies at the door of nature itself, or, more frequently, wears the badge of man’s insensitivity, greed or triumphal ignorance.

The megalithic Xagħra Circle destroyed by the site's owner in 1835 over a disagreement on the price for its expropriation.

Things started on a squalid note in 1835, after the unique Xagħra Circle was excavated on private land. The authorities offered to purchase the site but the owner wanted more. To prove who was boss, he armed himself with a sledgehammer and systematically smashed all the enormous megaliths – he believed his to be a cunning answer to a tight-fisted government.

Watercolour by Ducros of the 1605 Torre Garza overlooking Mġarr, demolished in the 19th century.

Facade of Nadur parish church before its demolition in the early 20th century.

A number of Hospitaller fortifications met similar fates. The 1605 Torre Garza, in Mġarr, designed by Vittorio Cassar, was pulled down in the 19th century and a hotel now occupies its footprint. And, in 1915, the army demolished the 1720s Qbajjar tal-Qortin fortress, Marsalforn, to make way for a temporary wireless station, decommissioned just four years later.

The 1690s Palazzo Gourgion dismantled in 1943 to make way for a temporary air-strip

Another view of Palazzo Gourgion, near Xewkija, dismantled temporarily in 1943, but never rebuilt.

To construct a makeshift airstrip for the invasion of Sicily, the American war machine in 1943 dismantled stone by numbered stone the historic 1690 Palazzo Gourgion, near Xewkija, and paid for its later rebuilding. Fast to vanish, never to reappear.

The medieval ‘Templars’ cemetery in Victoria obliterated in the 1930s.

The enigmatic medieval resting place of the ‘Templars’, today the footprint of the Don Bosco Oratory.

And, when, in 1933, the Don Bosco Oratory, in Victoria, became reality, no better site was identified but to build it over the enigmatic and exceptional medieval ‘Templars’ cemetery, which had survived centuries.

The original facade of Xewkija parish church, demolished in the 1950s.

Facade of the original Xewkija parish church after enlargement.

Similarly, Xewkija parish church, one of the major showpieces of the bravura of baroque scalpellini, in the 1950s gave way to an insipid duplicate of a Venetian basilica.

Extraordinary fungus-like rock formations in northwest Gozo. 1915s photo by Mikiel Farrugia.

One of the earliest photographs, c.1870, of the Azure Window, Dwejra, which collapsed in 2017.