PA Abruptly Revokes Buffer Zone Protecting One Of Malta’s Oldest Villas In Tarxien
The Planning Authority (PA) has recently revoked a protective buffer zone around one of Malta’s oldest standing villas in Tarxien.
Villa Barbaro is a scheduled protected Grade 1 historic building, said to predate the Grand Siege of Malta.
While the PA had granted a buffer zone surrounding the villa and its gardens just over a year ago, this was revoked in a seemingly hurried decision, Times of Malta reported.
The revoked buffer zone stipulated that surrounding buildings should not surpass 13.5 metres, hence preventing the villa and its gardens from becoming overshadowed by towering apartments.
“Happy Christmas everyone, but not happy days for Villa Barbaro’s Grade 1 historic gardens, which have been ruthlessly stripped by the Planning Authority of the protective buffer it itself gave them only a year ago!” owner Tony Cremona Barbaro wrote on social media following the decision.
“The gardens have now gone from being protected just a year ago to being condemned to visual ruination and burial under 6-floor future development at the back!”
“This utterly shameful decision was taken despite the opposition of both the Authority’s own Heritage Unit and that of the Superintendence of Cultural Heritage, and worse still, in defiance of the Appeal Tribunal, which had ordered them to protect the garden’s vistas from within the garden,” he lamented.
Cremona Barbaro also accused the PA of having “gone rogue” adding that it has hit “rock bottom” in wake of this decision.
The revocation of the buffer zone was decided by only four members of the PA out of seven, which resulted in a tie.
Meanwhile, last year’s decision was a unanimous vote by the board, which was hurriedly overturned this year by the same board.
What do you make of this decision?
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