The once-grand villa in Guardamangia, where the then Princess Elizabeth spent her first years of marriage between 1949 and 1951, is finally up for sale after years of neglect and controversy. The beautiful Grade 2 scheduled townhouse, which dates back to the mid-1700s, is on sale at an asking price of €5.9 million.
The 18-bedroom villa – originally the Villa Medina – covers an area of 1,560 square metres and comes with its own gardens and belvedere walkway. It is listed with various real estate agencies and is described as “an amazing grand palazzo-style property” that is crying out “for a great conversion and will make a superb residence or, possibly, a commercial venue”… and that it is “suitable as a museum, boutique hotel with restaurant or café”.
Real estate agents are renowned for covering all the possible angles. The worrying bottom line appears to be that the buyer can do whatever he likes with the property. The location of the villa, in a wonderful residential part of Guardamangia, makes it an extremely attractive site. Left solely to the marketplace, this leaves the future of this magnificent and historic property with two broad possible outcomes.
Either, if we are fortunate, a rich purchaser (recognising the potential for returning it to its former glory as a grand villa of historical and architectural value) will purchase it to live in. Or – and, regrettably, this is more likely in the philistine culture that has swept Malta’s construction industry – a contractor will purchase it to convert it into yet another ‘boutique hotel’ or ‘high-end apartment block’.
There is, however, a more attractive alternative, and it is something to which the government has in the recent past given serious consideration. This is for Heritage Malta to purchase it and to restore it as a historic property and visitor museum dedicated to Queen Elizabeth’s strong association with Malta. The arguments in favour of such a course are both cultural and commercial.
The villa is best known as the house where the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh spent their early married life between 1949 and 1951. Prince Philip was based in Malta with the Royal Navy and Princess Elizabeth first joined him in Villa Guardamangia on their second wedding anniversary. She was then 23 years old. She was to come out to Malta on three more occasions as Princess between 1949 and 1951, each time living there.
She returned as Queen on a state visit in 1954 and she has since been to Malta in 1967 (three years after Malta’s Independence, as the island’s head of state); in 1992 and 2005; in 2007 (to celebrate her diamond wedding anniversary), and in 2015.
Malta is thought to be the Queen’s favourite country, the only place where she could live “leading a normal life” without the pressure of being next in line to the throne. Our country is the only foreign country the Queen has ever called home.
As Queen Elizabeth, now 93 years old, approaches the end of her remarkable reign, the scope for turning Villa Guardamangia into a historic house and visitor museum commemorating her close association with Malta is an opportunity that should not to be missed.
Such an initiative by the government would not only give recognition to the strong historic ties that bind Malta and Britain but would prove an extremely popular addition to Malta’s tourism product.