Architecture & Design

10 | Architecture & Design D ominating St. George's Square in the heart of Valletta, the Grandmaster's Palace is the theatre where our nation was born. Built by the Knights of St. John for their illustrious Grandmasters, as from 1570, the Palace was a state within a building. Sustaining the role of the central seat of power, by the French, British, and today the President of the Republic, the sovereign edifice on the Maltese Islands welcomes around 200,000 visitors each year. However, only the armoury (at ground floor) and five staterooms at the Piano Nobile level together with the main staircase, were open to the public. On the 19th of November 2018, Heritage Malta embarked on one of its most ambitious restoration projects. The entire project aims to attract a projected increased audience of 300,000 annual visitors and will grant access to over eighty-five percent of the building footprint. Targeted to be completed by October 2022, the first phase of this project (€10 million part-financed via the European Regional Development Fund), shall see the reinstatement of the Armoury in its original location – the former Parliament Chamber; the restoration of the artworks in the corridors and Uccelliera of the Piano Nobile; and a visitor centre in the rehabilitated former Casa del Monte and Orangerie. Covering a footprint of over 900sqm, the restoration of the Piano Nobile corridors and re-discovered Uccelliera (aviary) started with a 3D laser scanning documentation of the current condition. This was followed by the removal of the painted soffit and lunettes. The former revealed an unforeseen situation where large sections of the concrete ceiling – a post-war intervention - were severely damaged and threatening collapse. Heritage Malta acted fast, and after securing emergency funds, turned this challenging situation into an opportunity, reinstating the earlier timber beam and 'xorok' roofing system. The restoration of the 18th century soffit paintings of the renowned decorator Niccolò Nasoni, painted in 1723-25, began by detaching the original canvas from its polystyrene backing. This methodology was adopted in the 1970s when the soffit was reinstalled after being taken down during WWII for safekeeping. A one-is-to-one print of the corridor was spread out in the former Armoury Hall, over which the canvases were re-laid. This allowed for missing segments and the original sizes of the canvases to be identified and be properly aligned. Conservator-restorers moved in, cleaning the over-painting and previous interventions to uncover the original paint layers. Missing areas of the painted surfaces were infilled and retouched to regain the unity of the entire decorative scheme. In the meantime, a new hanging system for the soffit was being designed. The system enables conservators to easily handle the artworks for maintenance and future conservation interventions. The latest lightweight state- of-the-art materials, consisting of a sandwich panel with a core in aluminium honeycomb, were chosen over which the canvases were relined. Following the reinstallation of the panels, strips of Japanese paper were attached over the seams between the panels to conceal the gaps. These were then retouched to integrate with the rest. The intervention on wall paintings/decorations were preceded by an analysis of the paint layers via the preparation of 'scaletti'; in some instances over 16 superimposed layers were revealed! Restoration in the Uccelliera and in the corridors brought to light many (lost) decorative features in the wall and lunette areas, including coat of arms and a landscape featuring a sea view with a flamingo previously unseen. Sketches by German-Danish artist Charles Frederick de Brochtorff in the early 1800s demonstrate that the original floors of the corridor were paved with yellow limestone slabs. In the second half of the 19th century, they were replaced with marble, and the insignias and restorIng the embodIment of a natIon

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