Villa Guardamangia may have hosted a young Queen Elizabeth II but Heritage Malta is determined not to turn the property into a shrine to royal nostalgia when it opens to the public in the future.
An interpretation brief for the villa published this week warns any future designer to “above all” avoid “projecting a political picture of ‘those were the days’”.
It says future curators must “steer away” from suggesting “an approval of monarchy per se and what it represents (including inequality and reinforcing dominant power structures)”.
In this way, the stone villa, purchased by the government in 2019, could be “more relevant to a much wider public, while keeping in mind the overbearing effects of colonialism in Malta”.
Britain’s late Queen Elizabeth II and her husband, the Duke of Edinburgh, lived in the property between 1949 and 1951, before the young princess was crowned queen in 1953.
The crumbling villa is undergoing restoration at a cost of at least €10 million before it will be opened to the public as a tourist attraction in the coming years.
Experience for visitors should focus on ‘human and normal’
As part of the project, Heritage Malta issued a tender this week for the services of an interpretation design consultant at a cost of €42,000 and included an interpretation design brief in the tender documents.
The government agency’s brief said that, while the residence has a colourful 300-year history, the presence of the royal couple “put it on the international map” and made it important for international royal tourism.
But it acknowledged that the property is far removed from gold-plated thrones and palace pomp, and, so, the experience for visitors should focus on the “human and normal”.
Those words are taken from the mouth of Edwina Mountbatten, whose husband, Lord Louis Mountbatten had leased the property and made it available to the young royals.
Mountbatten said of the then-princess: “It’s lovely seeing her so radiant and leading a more or less human and normal existence.”
The interpretation brief points out that the villa, built in 1900, is “normal” because it was never a royal property, neither “physically nor visually”. Its interiors included borrowed furnishings and locally sourced items, reflecting what the document describes as a “make-do” attitude. It adds: “It never was and will not be presented as a royal palace with sumptuous interiors.”
It is “human”, the document explains, because this was the first and last time the then Princess Elizabeth was able to experience a semblance of civilian life. That included running errands, visiting the hairdresser and even sunbathing.
Her fondness for Malta, which she described as her “isle of happy memories”, is well documented. In a letter to her mother, she wrote: “I feel very sad at leaving here, really, for life is so pleasantly different from England though admittedly it is slightly too social.”
The brief acknowledges that the attention on “human and normal” in contrast to typical royal tourism, which focuses on extraordinary experiences, “may potentially surprise or disappoint visitors who expect... royal grandeur”.
The project also considers its audience carefully. While the site is expected to attract British and international visitors with an interest in royal history, Heritage Malta also acknowledges a sensitive issue with local audiences.
It claims the Maltese public “most likely to engage” with the property is “a naturally decreasing number of those rather advanced in age who remember Malta in pre-1964 colonial times with some sense of nostalgia”.
It says most younger audiences cannot understand what it means to be in a colony, cannot imagine any other alternative to being in an independent nation, and do not even know Princess Elizabeth lived at the villa.
“Some may still not know or simply do not care, while others look at it with disdain as a symbol of colonial times (like those in the UK for whom the crown is a source of shame as a glamour of backwardness),” it says.