UNESCO delegation heading to Malta next week to assess fortifications bid

A delegation from UNESCO and its advisory body will arrive in Malta next week to assess a recent bid to classify various fortifications across the country as world heritage sites.

The team from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) and International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) will arrive on Monday to carry out a technical evaluation of the bid.

Malta applied in September to include Valletta's historic fortifications, along with the Cottonera Lines, Santa Margherita Lines, Mdina, and the Cittadella in Gozo, on the World Heritage List under the name “The Maltese Fortifications of the Knights of St John.”

The UNESCO World Heritage List was established under the 1972 World Heritage Convention, which Malta ratified in 1978. Just two years later, in 1980, Malta successfully added three key sites: the Ġgantija Temples in Gozo, the Ħal Saflieni Hypogeum, and the city of Valletta.

News of the visit came in a statement issued by Flimkien għal Ambjent Aħjar (FAA), which noted that it had been invited to present its viewpoints to the mission.

The NGO stressed that a recent application (PA/03174/26) to build a large lido using reclaimed land along the Sliema waterfront, facing Valletta, along with “abusively constructed, floodlit padel courts on Manoel Island”, were of concern to the outcome of the assessment.

This, in addition to the “gross over-commercialisation and loss of authenticity of Valletta”, the organisation said.

Reiterating its objections to the planned lido, FAA noted that UNESCO was asking for a review of Malta’s Floor Area policy, which it said was the basis for another recent application to build a 31-storey high-rise in Gżira on the site of a scheduled car showroom.

The proposed high-rise would “block the protected view corridors from university to Valletta”, the NGO said.

It highlighted that Friday June 19, was the deadline for objections to the planned lido, and that the Environment and Resources Authority had on Thursday requested an environmental impact assessment of the project.

More than 1,000 objections had been lodged against the planned lido at the time of publication.

The FAA statement also noted that the organisation had sent UNESCO a 52-page critique of the proposed Valletta Buffer Zone.

Meanwhile the Nationalist Party has urged the government to submit updated reports requested by UNESCO on Valletta’s status as a World Heritage Site “without further delay”. The then Culture Minister had promised the reports would be submitted by the end of 2023 after admitting the government had fallen behind in preparing them.