An appeal by the Mdina Metropolitan Chapter to place tables and chairs outside the cathedral museum has been rejected by a court, which stressed the duty to safeguard one of the country’s “principal jewels, namely Mdina”.
The case dates back to 2017 when the Cathedral Chapter had applied for a licence to operate a coffee shop inside the museum.
A permit was granted in 2018. A new request was then filed for encroachment into an outside area: placing five tables, chairs and umbrellas on the right of the museum’s main entrance.
The case officer recommended an approval, based upon an architect’s report stating that the “proposed area for tables and chairs is in an area which is effectively pedestrian priority with heavily restricted traffic flow. Hence there are no particular issues”.
Despite that recommendation, the board of governors of the Lands Authority turned down the application. It pointed out that the policy on outdoor catering areas in public open spaces only permitted such encroachment if it did “not ad-versely affect the characteristics of the public open space of significant historical, architectural, natural or social importance”.
The museum curator and director, Monsignor Edgar Vella, filed an appeal to the Administrative Review Tribunal. But the situation remained unchanged: the tribunal turned down the appeal, prompting the Cathedral Chapter to take its grievance before the civil court of appeal.
It argued that the outdoor furniture was intended not only as an extension of the seating area but also to prevent illegal parking of vehicles close to the museum façade.
Moreover, the tables and chairs were to be removed every evening and would not be taken out in cold weather, unlike those in a much smaller square, merely a few metres away, in front of a hotel opposite the lateral façade of de Vilhena Palace.
However, the court rejected all the arguments, pointing out that the policy gave the authorities room for discretion and that an encroachment granted in one square did not automatically justify a similar concession in “every Mdina square”.
The museum’s argument of ‘like with like’ did not hold water, the court said, observing it did not need an expert to immediately realise that such outdoor structures, if allowed, would not be consonant with the ambience of the square, particularly the imposing façade of the museum itself, an 18th century building across the square from the Archbishop’s Palace.
The requested extension was not in the public interest and the parking problem was “nothing but a banal excuse by the applicant to justify the application in an attempt to generate profit through the use of public space”, Mr Justice Anthony Ellul commented in his decision.
“Every public authority,” the court said, was “duty bound to safeguard in the public interest one of the country’s principal jewels, namely Mdina”.