The Knights' vantage point

How wonderful to read the article Mount Sciberras Was Arable (January 4)! It is not at all surprising that evidence of pre-1565 human activities turns up in Valletta when scientific archaeological methods are applied to sites like the Palace Square. I must take issue on one point: the Knights built Valletta on Xiberras because it is an easily defensible peninsula and because it dominates the surrounding area. There never was a plan to level the mount.

Sir Themistocles Zammit collected evidence of ancient land use at Valletta. Picking up pottery shards on the glacis, he identified prehistoric, Roman and later pieces and noted a fair number of Roman-fired bricks built into the scarp of the bastion of St James, which have now disappeared.

Siege maps and maps of Valletta published by Albert Ganado depict a pre-siege "road" system on the peninsula; doubtless rough tracks giving farmers access to their fields. A track running along the spine of the peninsula (the line followed by Republic Street) was probably more substantial for it led to a chapel and perhaps even a small lookout tower at the tip of Xiberras. The late Joseph Galea also discovered references to an ancient shrine and this also suggests activity.

Laparelli's account of the foundation ceremony of Valletta in 1566 indicates that it was not easy for people to move around on Xiberras in 1566. While those present could walk to the site of each bastion on the main front to dedicate them in turn to St Peter and St Paul, St James, St John and St Michael, this was not possible for the other bastions along the sides of the city partly because the peninsula was littered with the graves of Turks and siege works and partly because of the rough terrain. So everyone turned to face each bastion from the foundation stone as they were dedicated.

Some are surprised that Xiberras was probably not settled before 1566. Laparelli states that Valletta was to be built on virgin ground and he is undoubtedly correct: the other side of Grand Harbour and its inner reaches at Marsa were more attractive because the creeks there provided safe havens for shipping.

One disadvantage of Xiberras as a site for a settlement or city was that it lacked a safe haven to protect naval and other vessels. As early as 1557 Gian Giacomo Leonardi urged the Knights to provide a Manderaggio if they built a fortified headquarters on Xiberras and Laparelli actually started excavating one. Lack of money brought the project to a halt.

Girolamo Cassar later proposed utilising rubble cut from the ditches and the Manderaggio for a breakwater and quay on either side of Valletta and he started digging a haven along the shore leading to St Elmo on the Marsamxett side to give the city a degree of self sufficiency as regards communications, re-enforcements etc. These projects were still born: Valletta remained dependent on facilities across the harbour and its quays were not safe from storm until the breakwater was built.

Xiberras was waterless and this too discouraged settlement. Water was plentiful at Marsa, of course, and there were springs along the shores at places like Għajn Dwieli. Even as the fortifications of Valletta were being built, huge rainwater cisterns were constructed in St Elmo's ditches. The discovery of a small spring in 1566 was taken as signalling God's blessing on the project. Its site appears on many maps of Valletta including Laparelli's own plans. The spring still exists.

Before 1565, Xiberras was probably cultivated as intensively as a meagre water supply and soils (and safety from corsairs) permitted. Probably there were huts and even, perhaps, the odd farmhouse on the peninsula but nothing more substantial. In Carthaginian and Roman times, the long periods of peace perhaps encouraged some larger individual buildings but, like Corradino and the other promontories, Xiberrras possibly experienced significant usage in prehistoric times when its isolation and high ground encouraged settlement.

I will be publishing an article on Girolamo Cassar as a military engineer in the next issue of Melita Historica, which commemorates its 50th anniversary. It includes a transcription of a long report on Valletta by Fra Pietro Spina (1594) in which he describes the problems of building the bastion of St Peter and St Paul (the Upper Barrakka). Cassar told Spina that it was built on two levels in order to avoid overloading the underlying bed rock with masonry and rubble because it was honeycombed with caves.

Should an opportunity to excavate in this area present itself - and lf nothing is done to restore this bastion, its reconstruction will be necessary following a catastrophic collapse - I suspect that evidence of Valletta's earliest inhabitants will come to light in the long-buried caves there.