Parliament at MCC

In my article in The Sunday Times (December 28), I had proposed Fort St Elmo, as well as the Auberge de Bavière as alternative sites for Parliament, but the Mediterranean Conference Centre is an absolutely perfect proposal.

The former large central courtyard, roofed over as it is, will never manage to come anywhere near to looking and feeling like a theatre. In its reconstruction it was conceived as a conference hall, and that is precisely what it looks and feels like. For a large theatre it lacks the proportions, its set-up is cold, failing completely to give that welcoming and embracing 'hold' which a theatre absolutely needs to give if it is to make audiences inside it feel they belong to the space and to each other.

On the other hand, that large space could so easily, and with reasonably controlled costs, be made to house Parliament and there will be more than ample space around it, above it or below it, to accommodate much of what is necessary for Parliament to function as it should.

A golden location like the Opera House site simply cannot be hijacked for a space that will bar most of Malta's citizens from living it, and not just visiting it. That space must be lived!

One of the major reasons being given for Parliament's move out of the Palace is tourism. Is it tourism that has for years been urging the paving of Valletta and Mdina streets, and the restoration of state-owned palace façades and interiors? Is it concern for tourism that makes us despair as we walk through this splendid baroque city and find our eyes grated by the sight of splendid wooden balconies, portals and louvres disintegrating on so many of Valletta's architectural gems - simply because the upper floors of so many noble houses are (ab)used for storing goods waiting to be sold in the glitzy shops that take over their ground floors? The noble nature of our capital is lost, buried, hidden, as many of its splendid homes are denatured.

Walk through Mdina and see how its magnificence works upon you. Walk through much of Valletta, and see how you have to raise your eyes up to the upper storeys to capture some idea of what many of its buildings are. Those buildings concretise visions of generations upon generations of architects, draughtsmen, sculptors, master masons, their doings 'documented' in stone, evidence of their quest, there for us to stroll by.

But strolling through the main streets of our city it is not the architecture that impacts on us. Art and a sense of culture are absent from our city. Remember that Valletta is a rare thing - a capital city without a higher education establishment inside it. It is a city whose theatres are at its edges, and those theatres know it: they do not put up that splendid array of posters which theatres in capital cities do all over the world. Our theatres know they are off the beaten track, and they know that it is useless for them to put up the poster attractors they need.

The result? Our city's fabric dismally fails to stimulate a desire for art, for culture, for food for the mind and for the spirit. Shame upon us if the restoration of our city's façades has our tourists in mind, and not the minds of our future generations! The rehabilitation of our capital city's fabric is desired avidly so that it could impact minds, feed souls and spirits, raise our aspirations

What our city needs is for it to be seen as pulsating with artistic and cultural life. It needs to be such as to impact eyes and ears of all who get into it.

Valletta's 'sufficiency' of theatres draws only fixed niche audiences. Those theatres cannot do otherwise. They are out of sight, out of mind.

I repeat my plea - please, Prime Minister... pause. Listen. Think. It's yours to reverse.