When friends or tourists ask me what their priority should be while visiting Gozo, without hesitation I answer – the Ċittadella. The reason is simple: such a visit offers a full-on sensory glimpse into the island’s astonishing past, its troubled present and its possible future.
It is also a one-stop-shop through which to experience the island’s good, its bad and its downright ugly. It should rank high on anyone’s rough guide to the ‘guts of Gozo’.
The historic importance of the Ċittadella is immediately apparent when one stands atop its walls. It is literally a panoramic overview of all sea approaches, of the topography of the island, of its maze of tiny fields, walls and diverse houses, of its village cores and of its still existing rural character.
From its walls, you can feel and smell the sea, the seasonally shaped land, the infinite variety of winds and the intense heat of its sun. A visit to its walls late on a summer’s evening offers a stunning yet soothing light show as the sun disappears rapidly behind Żebbuġ.
There is much to be enjoyed beyond the intriguing history of the Ċittadella itself (and the surrounding island) that verges on the magical.
Needless to remark, it is a world-class platform around which to paint, draw, photograph, write and just generally be inspired. In a country where the term ‘world-class’ has become a source of ridicule, the Ċittadella is without argument world-class.
I know some of those involved in its recent renovation and reimagining and their vision, skills and sheer expertise embodies so much that is good about Gozo. The Ċittadella offers a visceral connection to the geography and history of this singular island.
Looking southwards from its walls, that ‘other’, ‘modern’ and venal Gozo can be observed in yet another iconic island ‘monument’. This time, the monument is an ‘in your face’ celebration of concrete and corruption. This new monument symbolises the rot that is at the core of Gozitan politics and ‘business’ today and involves many of its main (and routinely celebrated) ‘characters’.
That monument is the much-hyped, massively overpriced and the ‘maybe soon to be finished’ but ever illusive Gozo Sports Complex with its dark and murky history. The sheer scale of expenditure and the endless ‘contracting’ associated with that complex is truly ‘world-class’.
Just as the islanders needed the Ċittadella for defence reasons, today’s Gozitans need the sports complex but the cost they are being forced to pay for it highlights not just Gozo’s ‘bad’ but its ‘really, really bad’.
Over many decades, Gozitans have become inured to the scale and depth of the price that is extracted from them for even the most basic of island needs (for example just one road or for its ferry service) by their political and business ‘masters’.
The ‘bad’ has come to be accepted by the majority as perfectly normal, even necessary. And now that bad increasingly travels in tandem with the island’s new ugly.
That ugly in manifest in a growing number of apparently ‘designed’ rabbit warrens in Xagħra, ‘boutique’ hotels and apartments in Xlendi and almost all constructions in Marsalforn.But pride of place in Gozo’s new ugly must surely be reserved for the ‘iconic’ SME park in Xewkija.
The latter has the look and feel of a badly imagined prison but, apparently is deemed ‘compatible’ with the local landscape. Its purpose (beyond the use of yet more concrete) remains vague despite its supposed ‘planning’.
That ‘compatibility’ of Gozo’s increasingly overbuilt yet woefully ‘designed’ and increasingly urban fabric reflects and is reinforced by the island’s over-egoed and socially primitive elite. That elite and the built environment they are currently manufacturing is aided and abetted by far too many Gozitans.
Gozo’s good is in imminent danger of being swamped by Gozo’s bad and Gozo’s ugly.