Floriana & il-Furjaniżi. A tri-centenary commemoration.

edited by Joan Abela and Giulia Privitelli

published by Kite Group and IL-FURJANA Publications, Malta 2024

The editors of this memorable book, Joan Abela and Giulia Privitelli, have put together an extraordinarily detailed and sumptuous collection of some very high-quality articles by eminent local scholars on Floriana. The articles range over a wide variety of topics from architecture to gardens, to urban planning, to art, to ecclesiastical history, to food and music, etcetera.

Here, local history serves two purposes: (i) to commemorate a place and its people in a scholarly endeavour, and (ii) to link up local with national and global history, for Floriana is perhaps the unrecognised crucible where these three levels interacted in Malta. To explore this city’s history is to discover the island’s modern evolution over the past three hundred years.

The Furjaniżi often considered their city as a type of Cinderella. But the key to understanding Floriana is to perceive it in terms of the tension between siblingship and filiation. Floriana considers itself Valletta’s younger sibling, equal in grandeur and sustaining its older brother.

A view of the titular altarpiece at the Chapel of Our Lady of Manresa. Photo: Ian Noel Pace. Courtesy of the Archdiocese of Malta

The latter by contrast sees it as its offspring whose very raison d’être springs from it. This ambiguity is the source of tension and rivalry in the domains of religious symbolism and sporting competition, but also the foundation of their essential intertwining.

Valletta could not develop as the capital city were it not for the services and embellishments provided by its neighbour. Nor could it acquire its gravitas without the proscenium that Floriana provided. That neighbour in turn developed its own distinctive culture, character and urban form with its grand boulevards, its open parade and assembly grounds, its jewelled gardens, evocative cemeteries, and memorials that recorded the island’s role in modern global history.

Colour postcard showing apartments in Floriana’s St Anne Street. The iconic Ta’ Londra confectionary had its premises just below (today APS Bank offices).

For if Valletta is a monument to frozen European baroque symbolism, Malta’s Buda, Floriana transits Malta to the modern colonial and post-colonial world, its Pest. Valletta and Floriana: Malta’s BudaPest, and its Grand Harbour is shared fractiously between them, its Danube, bluer than the original.

Both parent and sibling: hierarchy and equality. This is the key to understanding the complex relationship between these two cities. Normally the two organising principles are separate, but in this case, they are inextricably intermeshed and from this derives their complex relationship. Now, there is one character from classical literature that provides an illumination: Oedipus. Let us recall that Oedipus is both a father to his siblings, and a sibling to his children.  

Old photograph of Porte des Bombes, Floriana. Photo Courtesy of the Giovanni Bonello Collection

Let us note that Floriana emerges as a relief valve for an expanding Valletta population and to protect the new capital. “Genealogically”, one could therefore argue that Floriana is Valletta’s offspring, its satellite. But from Floriana’s perspective, it is Valletta’s younger assisting sibling, enabling it to emerge as the capital of a modern polity. It provided both the spaces and the infrastructure for the importation of food and supplies through Pinto Wharf, food storage and processing, and the channelling of water.

Its fortifications subsequently repurposed as gardens, particularly at Sa Maison that heralded the romantic English Garden, contrasted with the strictly laid out continental ones we find elsewhere. In Floriana’s gardens, culture becomes nature and nature culture, in contrast to Valletta’s rigidity where the two are kept separate. 

‘Bugaci’ reservoir, located underneath Triq Sarria, Floriana. Photo: Steven Mallia

It offers curated poetic pockets in urban culture that austere Valletta lacks. Floriana also provided the island with its first modern hospitals. It was through Floriana that Malta entered the world of the modern administrative state, including its clerical personnel, while the three cities across the water furnished Malta’s industrial labour force.

Floriana remains Malta’s stage where the nation decked itself out to celebrate its independent nationhood, welcome visiting dignitaries and new currencies. Nothing more emblematises the thorny parent-sibling relationship of Valletta-Floriana than their apical spiritual ancestors.

While St Paul is the spiritual “Father of the Maltese”, he is the stranger-charismatic, the civilising outsider who visits, performs miracles, establishes a new religious community, and departs, transferring its care to his anointed sibling-successor from whom episcopal succession is traced.

Crowds throng beneath the towering balconies expecting to catch, literally, all sorts of items during the Marċ tas-Siegħa.

If Paul is the peripatetic firebrand, Publius is his accessible anointed, combining both civil and religious authority. In both, there is a spiritual doubling: a disguised ‘God’ who descends as the unannounced stranger, reveals his identity through thavmata, anoints his descendants of priest-rulers, and retires.  

St Publius’ cult emerged in the first popular stirrings of 19th-century nationalism. The Furjaniżi’s selection of Publius as their patron saint may have been a younger sibling’s mimetic rivalry, but a canny move. To reject their request was tantamount to a denial of local Christian continuity.

Supporters of Floriana FC celebrating one of the club’s many successes. Photo courtesy of Julian Holland

Nowhere has sibling rivalry been more vigorously pursued than on the football pitch. Winning a football match against the Beltin was the overturning of an imposed and resented satellite status. Mere sibling rivalry? Not quite. Let us recall that Oedipus’ offspring discover that their father is also their (half) brother for they share a mother.

Two hugely popular and hilarious videos on YouTube provide us with clues. In one football terrace chant, Furjaniżi taunt Beltin with “Min hu missierkom?” (who are your fathers?). The other video is the Beltin’s counter-response chant: “Staqsu l’ommkom” (ask your mothers). Both groups assert that their opponents are illegitimate, but also by implication let slip that they may well be half-siblings. Both are composed for us the public, for humiliation requires an audience.

Parish church of St Publius damaged during a German attack on April 28, 1942. Photo Courtesy of the Giovanni Bonello Collection

Anthropologists have long noted that joking relationships characterise ambiguous social relationships. The Furjaniżi’s barbative joke is intentioned as an embarrassing exposure, but the Beltin transform this mocking intimacy into an unexpected unification: “staqsu l’ommkom” (ask your mothers). The allusion is taken up and turned back against the aggressor.

Freud long ago noted that a joke “must bring forward something that is concealed or hidden”. I would argue that what is concealed or hidden is that the Furjaniżi and Beltin are one people divided by sibling rivalry and that football is a relatively safe way to pursue it, bringing out a difficult truth: that both communities had to make compromises to survive.

Casa Manresa. Photo: Ian Noel Pace. Courtesy of the Archdiocese of Malta

Finally, siblings resemble each other, none more so when they grow older. Floriana and Valletta face similar challenges: both have declining ageing populations; both have many patriotic ex-murals (Furjaniżi and Beltin ta’ barra) who cheer their natal teams and participate in their town’s celebrations; both had intertwined histories; and both face the same problems, particularly in overtourism which is strangling Valletta’s residents. Furjaniżi should be alert to the scourges of overtourism: il-Balzunetta could undergo an ersatz refabrication, as occurred to its sisterly Strada Stretta.

This book brought back to me what an extraordinary place Floriana has always been: independent, proud yet not overbearing, rich in history and human solidarity, and with a challenging future ahead of it. I commend the editors and the contributors for their labour of love and detailed scholarship that will kindle warmth, affection and respect for this city in all who read it.