One World - Protecting the most significant buildings, monuments and features of Valletta (92)
Auberge de Castille and the courtyard fountain
Originally, the Auberge of Castille and Leon was designed and built by Girolamo Cassar in the late 16th century, but it was rebuilt between 1741 and 1744 on the orders of the newly elected Portuguese Grandmaster Emanuel Pinto de Fonseca.
The new Auberge was built by capomastro Domenico Cachia, who according to a public deed promised to demolish the old Auberge and rebuild it according to the designs and plans submitted. Andrea Belli, an architect from Valletta (1703-1772) witnessed the signing of the contract for Auberge de Castille's rebuilding.
This highly decorative baroque styled, two-storey palace is located at the highest point of Valletta and features a highly ornate central portal flanked by freestanding columns and raised on a high podium of stairs. The façade overlooking Castille Square is subdivided into eleven bays: superimposed pilasters define the central bays while plain panelling characterise the three outer bays. The corner quoins consist of wide attached pilasters.
The windows are set within recessed wall panels that are rusticated at ground level and plain at the upper level. Omega hood mouldings and decorative surrounds characterise the piano nobile windows.
Over the portal is a bronze bust of Grandmaster Emanuel Pinto surrounded by a trophy of arms sculpted in stone that creeps up around the central window over the main portal which is crowned by the coat of arms of the Grandmaster. Above the central bay at roof level is a frontispiece with two shields of the coat-of-arms of Spain and Portugal.
The fountain in the courtyard was relocated here from elsewhere and probably dates to the 17th century.
It consists of a circular stone scalloped basin, about a metre in diameter, supported on an inverted trumpet-like stand the lower part of which consists of three P-shaped flower stems with water jets.
The whole composition is supported on a circular plinth. During the 1970s a base, a circular pond and three figures were added.
Mepa scheduled the Auberge de Castille and Leon and the courtyard fountain as Grade 1 national monuments as per Government Notice No. 276/08 in the Government Gazette dated March 28, 2008.