Heritage NGO Din l-Art Ħelwa and the owner of a Grade 1 scheduled Tarxien property have questioned the “grossly misleading” extension of the buffer zone around it. They say it still allows for five-storey buildings that would ruin the context of one of Malta’s oldest country houses.

After a 10-year battle to protect his unique 17th-century Villa Barbaro, Marquis Tony Cremona-Barbaro’s joy at learning the surrounding buffer would also include properties along Żejtun Road in front of it was short-lived.

According to The Government Gazette of August 11, it transpires the maximum building height in this road is 15.4 metres, effectively still translating into five floors.

This would have a “devastating” impact on the pre-Great Siege property, the marquis said.

Din l-Art Ħelwa strongly condemned the “supposedly protective height”, requesting its immediate reduction to a recommended two floors.

The extension, it said, made a mockery of the concept of buffer zones, creating a dangerous precedent for properties that were supposed to be protected by them.

At 15.4 metres, the buildings in the buffer zone would be over double the height of Villa Barbaro when they should be no higher.

This amounted to “an open invitation to greedy developers to destroy the villa’s spatial context by burying it under tall apartment blocks”.

An application to build a block of flats opposite the 500-year-old villa, which has since been suspended, had an original elevation of 17.5 metres – a difference of only 2.1 metres from what is now permitted.

Moreover, the important “detail” of the maximum height was omitted when the PA made its “self-congratulatory” announcement about the extension, the owner of the heritage monument pointed out. He discovered the missing information, to his “bitter disappointment”, in The Government Gazette.

The Tarxien garden’s early 17th-century prospettiva, a two-storey-high pavilion intended to act as a focal point.

In its statement, the PA had acknowledged that the setting was “an essential part of the property and how it is experienced”.

It also said that although the villa, its gardens, stables, private alley, boundary wall and a buffer zone behind and to the left, were afforded protection in 2009, it felt this needed to be increased to prevent the potential visual impact of future development on the villa.

The 2009 buffer zone only allowed for two storeys and no roof-level structures.

Cremona-Barbaro said the PA statement exposed the “propaganda ploy for what it truly is: a deceitful attempt to pass off what will effectively destroy Villa Barbaro’s context as protection of that same context”.

The PA had also mentioned the collaboration of the Superintendence of Cultural Heritage, but Cremona-Barbaro recalled that the superintendence had opposed the planned five-storey development.

DLĦ has called on the superintendent to exercise his overriding rights on protection of historical buildings and change the maximum height limitation.

The NGO also accused the PA of going against the recommendation of an expert report which it had commissioned: that no more than two floors be allowed on Żejtun Road.

The PA was in defiance of its own recent guidelines for the protection of the spatial context of Grade 1 scheduled houses, DLĦ added.

This “lamentable action does not inspire confidence in the sincerity” of the authority’s own recommendations.

Architect Edward Said has, in fact, written to the superintendence and the PA to express his “bewilderment” with their decision, saying it contradicts the analysis he was commissioned to provide, completely compromising the villa’s context forever. 

The long buffer battle

Marquis Tony Cremona-Barbaro’s long battle stemmed from the conviction that the protection of the context of a historical building was as important as scheduling the heritage home itself.

The villa was originally scheduled by the PA in 1996 for its historical and architectural value, already recognised in the 1920s when it was listed among protected monu­ments.

Last year, it was feared Villa Barbaro would be dwarfed by the development of the proposed Żejtun Road apartment block, the threat being even more serious, the Marquis maintained, because it was directly opposite the lowest part of the façade – an early 17th-century one-floor arched terrace.

“As the owner of two Grade 1 properties, I want to express my disappointment, anger and frustration at the authorities’ sustained failure to truly protect our heritage and enforce that protection,” said the marquis, whose family has cherished the country house since around 1535.

“Is this the way to treat owners of scheduled properties, who have made huge sacrifices to preserve our built heritage for future generations?”