This introduces the second part of this mini-series of images that recall the Sliema that is no more. Some of the major changes occurred within living memory, others predate that. The major differences are to be found in the way Sliema expanded horizontally – it now is practically joined at the hip with Gżira, San Ġwann and St Julian’s – vast swathes of agricultural land once separated the four localities: islands in a sea of fields.

Aerial view of Sliema, 1940s.

And the vertical thrust is no less notable. Gene­rally nothing more ambitious than three or four storeys once dared raise its head. That is, up to the building of the Hotel Preluna in 1969, when a shocked and scandalised population first witnessed a 13-floor mammoth. A skyscraper in Sliema! Today almost nothing of the old urban fabric survives on the extensive waterfront. The hinterland too is suffering ‘development’, but this satire on progress still occasionally meets some resistance.

What changed equally radically is the way of life. Sliema originally welcomed a homogeneous sector of humanity – the Sliemiżi, with distinct characteristics – more British-leaning in language, manners and political outlooks. They distinguished themselves from the rest of Malta, which was equally happy to distinguish itself from them. The inordinate growth of the population with recent massive migrations from other parts of the islands has diluted this distinctiveness, and now Sliemiż no longer has the connotation it once had.

To be concluded

The Arabesque cluster of houses built by architect Emmanuele Luigi Galizia in Rudolph Street in the late Victorian times. Photo: Richard Ellis

Feast day in St Mary Street, c. 1910. Note the oil lumini decorations, before the introduction of street electricity.

Tower Road, 1930s. Photo: Alfred Vella Gera

Modern buildings in Qui-si-Sana, 1930s. Photo: Alfred Vella Gera

The first Imperial Hotel in Sliema, 1920s.

The lower part of Tower Road, corner with the Strand in the 1910s.

The old Chalet, Tower Road, 1930s.

The lower part of Tower Road, corner with the Strand in the 1910s.