In the summer of 1565, Malta became the most beloved island in the Christian world,
and the Ottoman empire was furious about it. See, back in 1522, the Crusader Knights of Saint John
got violently evicted from their home in Rhodes by the Ottomans, and after taking up shop on the tiny
Maltese archipelago, the Knights got ready for the inevitable round 2. However, in a shock to the
Ottomans and all of Christian Europe, the Knights held out, withstanding this Great Siege of Malta
and halting the once-unstoppable Ottoman advance across the Mediterranean. This tiny rock proved
to be a colossal pain in the ass, and so became the pride and joy of every king in Europe. In the
decades following, these grateful rulers lavished treasures on Malta in thanks for them seemingly
saving the world, and as a result, the Knights of St John had the literal golden opportunity to turn
their new home into an impervious seaborne palace, a fortress of opulence, an island empire – I mean,
look, the place is pretty, okay? So to show you how Malta’s grandeur grew to meet the weighty
reputation of the Great Siege and become an Empire In Miniature, Let’s do some History!
Once the Ottoman cannons piped down and the
siege was finally over, priority one was building. The main bombardment was in and around the Grand
Harbor, where the Knights’ capital of Birgu suffered heavy damage and several of their
forts got overrun and battered. Grandmaster and hero of the siege Jean De La Valette thought a
new capital was in order, but rather than move to the ancient capital of Mdina way inland,
he stuck to the harbor and picked the central Sciberras peninsula as the site
of the Knights’ new city, La Valletta. The city was designed by the Pope’s own military architect,
with a grid plan and vastly overhauled defenses at Fort St Elmo. The original fort was captured
in the siege and clearly needed an upgrade, so the Knights piled up loads of finely-cut Maltese
limestone to fortify the peninsula. After many please-and-thank-you’s to the kings and princes of
Europe who financed Malta’s new HQ, Valletta was declared the capital in 1571. Over the following
centuries, the Knights steadily upgraded St Elmo to keep up with the latest in gunpowder-defenses,
and they also added more forts around the harbor, fortified the Citadella on the northern island of
Gozo as well as the old city of Mdina, and built a network of 6 coastal watchtowers in
the 1610s. With enough limestone fortifications to make an Ottoman admiral faint, Malta became
a triple-layer citadel, with Valletta as the central keep within the harbor and the island
at large. These fortifications were never directly tested in battle, but as a deterrent, the warning
to the Ottomans was clear: Malta was impossible to take before we built all this extra bulls***,
so good goddamn luck trying to take it now.
Seeing as our boys the Knights were Crusaders after all, it makes sense that an early priority
was churches, and as Valletta took shape, they did not dally. Grandmaster La Valette founded
Our Lady of Victory as the city’s first church just a year after the siege, and in the 1570s
the Knights built the Conventual Church of St John as the centerpiece convent of their order’s patron
saint. Today we know it as St John’s Co-Cathedral but that wasn’t until the 1820s so Shh! Forget
about it, it’s fine. The church, like everything else in Malta, is built from the local limestone,
in a style that’s big but not overtly showy, so it fits nicely with the rest of the city. The
real aesthetic and thematic heft is inside, as the interior decoration makes abundantly clear
just how thankful Europe was for the Knights’ service in the siege, with gold on fresco on
gold on marble on gold on gold on gold. Beyond the giant Caravaggio painting of St John’s beheading,
there’s a mountain of iconography relating the history of the Knights and the various corners
of Europe they came from. Rather than divide by country, the Order was comprised of 8 Tongues,
or Langue in French, reflecting the major ethno-linguistic identities of Europe at the time:
Auvergne, France, Provence, Castile, Aragon, Italy, Germany, and England – each Langue has
its own chapel in St John’s, and these 8 also symbolized the 8 points on the order’s fancy
cross. All this universalizes the Knights in a pan-European Christianity, which makes sense
given their origins as crusader-doctors in the Holy Land: that legacy of international Christian
cooperation stuck around. Most Knights could point to somewhere else they were from via their Langue,
so if the Knights weren’t from Malta, Malta could then be from everywhere. The structure of the
Order lent Malta a Catholic universality, as well as a very helpful in with all the royal courts of
Europe. Thematic architecture is expensive.
Now, each Langue had an administrative and social headquarters called an Auberge, or
Inn. The Knights originally built their Auberges in the city of Birgu once they arrived in 1530,
and then built new ones in Valletta after the siege. All of this work the 1500s follows what’s
called the Mannerist Style, then 3 Auberges and several churches received a distinct facelift in
the 16 and 1700s in the subsequent Baroque Style. What’s the difference between the two? Well,
the terminology is far more troublesome than it’s worth. See, in the past I’ve taken a shortcut and
described the Renaissance Architectural Style as Neoclassical, as it’s born from a rediscovery
of ancient Greek and Roman ideas. Strictly speaking, that is not actually Neoclassical,
because that term to refers exclusively to the Neoclassical Movement of the mid-17 and 1800s,
characterized as a return to the simplicity of actual classical architecture in contrast
to the elaborate swooshy opulence of Baroque. I understand the academic point of confining the
term “Neoclassical” to one specific era, I just fully disagree with it, so I use it as an umbrella
term for the Renaissance family of architectures. To that end, all Maltese architecture since the
Knights is some form of Neoclassical, but within that, “Mannerist” is an unhelpfully undescriptive
term. All granular terminology will struggle to fit cleanly along a timeline, but Mannerism really
loses me. This architecture does play a little with Classical elements, but nothing here is that
different from earlier Renaissance works in Italy. With Maltese Baroque we see more bold shapes,
more depth, more flair, More Size, so it’s helpful to call this style by a new name, but Mannerism to
me is just Renaissance Before Baroque. I’m sorry for the Mannerism erasure, but I just, I can’t,
I’m sorry, this term just makes no sense to me.
In that vein, many Maltese buildings started out Mannerist but got renovated in centuries after to
fit the contemporary Baroque style, whether that’s retrofitting a shiny new interior, such as the
Grandmaster’s Palace, or altering the whole face of the building, as was the case for the three
Baroque Auberges of Provence Italie and Castile. That last one especially is mondo fancy, as it got
rebuilt entirely in the 1740s. And several other buildings across Malta needed the redo after a
massive Sicilian earthquake in 1693, which takes us to the old city of Mdina. After the Knights
arrived, the old Maltese aristocracy kept largely to themselves inland while those wily boys were
out by the grand harbor, and the city maintained the Norman-Sicilian medieval architecture it
had for centuries. But after the earthquake wrecked large parts of the city and damaged
the Norman-era Cathedral of St Paul, the Knights saw that they had room to play and wasted no time
building over the ruins, making new city gates, a new Palazzo Vilhena, new bank & courthouse,
and new centerpiece Cathedral of St Paul; all built on the sites of older buildings that
didn’t super belong to the Knights, but all, of course, in gorgeous Baroque – And I really
can’t be that surprised: once a crusader always a crusader. Back in Valletta, new
baroque works bubbled up from the city, with fancy arches, civic buildings, and plenty of churches.
Crusaders, man, I tell ya.
By the end of the 1700s, tiny little Malta could compete with Europe’s grandest capitals, and rare
few could boast the raw aesthetic cohesion of a city made of purely local Limestone – It’s like
the city was either carved out of the peninsula or burst up out of the ground fully formed and
damn is that a look. But at the turn of the 1800s, Malta changed hands, as the Knights got booted by
Napoleon who in turn got booted by Britain, who held Malta as a colony until its independence
in 1964. In this century and a half, the big style import was a Victorian-era taste for
capital-N Neoclassical, which is to say: trying to accurately emulate the stately feel of Greek
and Roman architecture. The British renovated the Main Guard building with a neoclassical portico,
added a mini Greek-temple as a monument in the Lower Barrakka Gardens, built an Anglican
Cathedral for Saint Paul in the style of a big temple, and made another temple-like Garrison
Chapel for the Royal Navy boys. All told, just a few additions, but having stumbled onto each of
them myself while visiting Malta, they really sell the feeling of being in an ancient Greek
city. Even when Malta was part of someone else’s empire, their visual identity only became more
uniquely striking than before. Impressive. One trait they did share with Britain, however, was
getting bombed to bits in WWII. The Second Siege of Malta left many historic buildings in ruins,
needing heavy repairs or outright replacement in the decades after. Of the works done after the
war, one of the most dramatic is the Basilica of Our Lady of Mt Carmel with its ginormo dome – so
now at last the city is complete – the other is a trio of works by architect Renzo Piano, lending
a vividly modern City Gate, Parliament House, & Royal Opera House in the 2010s. The Maltese
limestone keeps them cohesive with the rest of the city, while their open design brings the
welcoming feeling of a civic plaza. Malta became a Republic in 1974, but I think this thematic
statement makes it all click: a modern yet very Maltese parliament square for a modern Republic.
Malta is as much of an architectural anomaly as
it is a historical one. What I find so compelling is the sense of universality that’s infused in
every block of limestone. The Knights represented a pan-European Catholicism that took physical form
in their iconography, artwork, and capital city. Valletta’s whole being is unified by stone, so the
monumental architecture rising out of it is just a bonus, and the styling of all that work in ancient
Greek and Roman aesthetics is a bonus-bonus to me in particular. Malta is the Classics in miniature,
Catholicism in miniature, the British Empire in miniature, and it shows all of them magnificently.
It’s a singular example of how opulent form and grand ideology can combine into something
stunningly greater than each on its own. Not just an imperial capital without an empire,
La Valletta is the empire.
Thank you for watching. I cannot believe I said so many nice things about Crusaders,
I need to go think about some stuff. This video goes out to my dad, who adventured
to Malta with me earlier this year, I hope this brings back the fond memories, because it truly
does for me. Thanks as always to our community of patrons, and I will see you all in the next video.