Valetta News 

Valletta places seventh in top European destinations

from The Times, 30 March 2013

Valletta has been voted as one of the top 10 European destinations by travellers who participated in an online competition organised by a Brussels-based consumers’ organisation.  Malta’s capital ranked seventh and, by placing in the top 10, won the right to be promoted by the European Consumers Choice, a voluntary organisation that works to give consumers a voice and reward companies.   The top 10 also win the right to use websites and official documents bearing the European Best Destinations 2013 logo.

“Valletta is the paradise! Nice weather, a country with a lot of history, the people are friendly, beautiful sceneries surrounded by a wonderful sea,” one tourist wrote.   Another wrote: “History, harbour and hidden treasures, all in one.”

Twenty countries participated in the competition.  The winner was Istanbul, Turkey, that got 12.4 per cent of votes. It was followed by Lisbon, in Portugal (12.2 per cent), Vienna, in Austria (9.5 per cent), Barcelona, in Spain (8.3 per cent), Amsterdam, in the Netherlands (7.2 per cent), Madrid, in Spain (6.5 per cent), Valletta (6.3 per cent), Nice, in France (6.2 per cent), Milan, in Italy (5.9 per cent) and Stockholm, in Sweden (5.3 per cent).

This is great news.  Even if it may seem to be a trivial matter, positive coverage by a leading European consumers organisation is useful. 

I recently interviewed tourists for my doctorate research and I can confirm that Valletta does provide a most enjoyable experience.  One of the questions I asked was to mention something negative about Valletta.  Most of them struggled to mention anything.   This is not to say that there is nothing that needs to be improved.  Far from it.  Valletta, however, does have many requisites to offer an exceptional experience to visitors.

                                       (comment by John Ebejer for VAF)

Read more: http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20130330/local/-Valletta-is-the-paradise-.463406

A day out by any other route

from The Sunday Times, 6 January 2013

An excellent article by Mark Anthony Falzon.  It gives a flavour of what experiencing a city like Valletta is all about.  It merits being reproduced here in its entirety. 

Thanks to the Valletta-Cottonera ferry service and the Baracca lift, Valletta now offers  yet another experience for Maltese and tourists to enjoy. 

“Fifteen minutes is how long it took me to get from my doorstep in Cospicua to Barrakka Gardens in Valletta the other day. It took me considerably longer to get my head round the thought that I hadn’t forgotten my car keys at home, that I wouldn’t be needing them at all for that matter.

The new sea connection between Cottonera and Valletta is one of those things that remind one that innovation and ‘development’ do not necessarily require grandiose projects. In this case I’m not sure even ‘innovation’ is in order. It’s simply a resuscitated connection and one that has been long, possibly too long, in the making.

Nor do I think the sea connection will do very much to ease the perennial headache of traffic jams to, and parking in Valletta. Most of us will still opt to use our cars and that’s not least because car use is now too embedded in practices like convenience shopping to cede territory just like that.

Still, it’s magic. The trick is to suspend all boring arguments from traffic management and weather conditions and boat legroom and such, and take it in as the unique experience that it is. Many were doing just that last Saturday and, hand on heart, it’s a while since I’ve seen people enjoying their city so much.

And that’s the big thing really. A city should properly serve up as many different species of experience as possible. The challenge for Valletta 2018 is that the city enhances known faces and present new ones in stimulating and playful ways. The sea connection is a tremendous point of departure in that direction.

I’m currently reading Edward Said’s excellent Subterranean Valletta (Fondazzjoni Patrimonju Malti, 2012). Said tells how in 1642 Grandmaster Lascaris had a tunnel cut through the rock and a road extended down at the Victoria Gate (at the time Porta del Monte) area. He also had warehouses and a wharf built and an exquisite garden laid out which came to be known (aptly) as Ġnien is-Sultan.

These and later initiatives turned the waterfront and its neighbouring streets into a hive of commercial activity. It was the point at which the sea and its various inhabitants (sailors, bumboatmen, and such) came in contact with the city.

This really was by far the most colourful entrance to Valletta. As lovers of Ellis’s photographs will know, the romance only ended in the mid-20th century. The dockyard’s large workforce and the population density around the harbour meant that the sea connection between Cottonera and Valletta lingered on for another 20 years or so.

I grew up in Valletta in the 1980s. By that time the maritime link had been relegated to a staple of tourist itineraries. Il-lanċa was a receding memory and the derelict and rusting Barrakka lift was primarily associated in our minds with a convenient drop should life get too rocky.

From a link, the sea became an obstacle. The only way to enter Valletta was through Putirjal (City Gate). Compared to that of our grandparents, our city was decidedly monologous and impoverished.

Which is why my morning outing turned out so rewarding, in at least three ways. First, the sea crossing itself. I happened to share a boat with people who remem­bered the lanċa of their childhood and spent the entire seven minutes reminiscing about the harbour as they knew it, crowded with British navy ships and dgħajjes tal-pass (local boats) and criss-crossing routes and routines.

There is something special about approaching Valletta by boat. One really feels the tension between the need to fortify and protect from sea attacks, and that to enable easy access to the sea and its commercial opportunity. Like a ship, Valletta simultaneously embraces and negates the sea. Perhaps most tellingly, one experiences the harbour area as one integral social and urban unit made diverse by complex walls and linguistic and territorial distinctions.

The trip ends at Lascaris Wharf. Or it doesn’t really because the next leg is equally strong in character. The new lift manages to look restrained and elegant while retaining the industrial aura of its predecessor. The few seconds it takes to breach the walls have all the qualities of a ritual siege. Indeed the lift itself looks somewhat like a siege tower from across the water.

This was Valletta like I had never experienced it before. Readers will pardon my florid enthusiasm but even the requisite espresso at Ellul’s on Strada Santa Luċia tasted better. I just wanted to walk and breathe the city. My defence is that I wasn’t alone. There were crowds of people at the lift and the mood was that in which conversations with strangers are quite alright.

The whole thing was very nearly marred by the monstrous new monument to de/la Valette. A piece of unbearable and worthless kitsch that looks like something the festa armar people left behind, this is just the type of temptation we need to resist, one that pushes us in the direction of a facile rhetoric that makes no attempt whatsoever to engage with the contemporary.

But no matter, Renzo Piano’s work in progress (our best ever spent tax money in my opinion) and the newly-restored church of Santa Caterina d’Italia were at hand. Again I saw people just drifting in and out of the sites as if they were tourists in their own land.

There is a certain implicit optimism about urban interventions of this kind. I don’t just mean political optimism – although truth be told, urban projects and politics are rarely divorced for long. Rather, it’s a way of living and engaging with one’s lived space.

Saturday morning was an eye-opener for me. I realised I had been starved of urbanity in its creative and explorative senses.

Valletta was no longer my city as Żebbuġ is to the Żebbuġin, that is, as a site of local attachment. It was my city as a Maltese person and, dare I say it, as a human being.”

Read More: http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20130106/opinion/A-day-out-by-any-other-route.452141

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