452 years ago today, Grand Master Jean Parisot de La Valette laid the foundation stone of the city that was to become Valletta, the crowing jewel of the Maltese islands. 

The date was March 28th, 1566. It was just months after the Maltese and the Knights of St. John had fought off waves of brutal Ottoman attack to come out victorious in the Great Siege of 1565. 

After Malta’s win against the Ottoman Empire, donations and thankful financial gifts from all over Europe started pouring into Malta. 

Pope Pius V was so happy with Malta’s win that he sent his own military engineer, Francesco Laparelli, to help Grand Master La Valette design the new capital city.

After finances were secured, thousands of slaves alongside Sicilian day labourers and Maltese workers began to get to work on Peninsula “Sciberras” – the site Valletta lies on.

Prior to Valletta, no major European city had ever been built entirely from the drawing board – they had usually just evolved over time. This meant Valletta could benefit from some useful systems built into the design.

Valletta was built with a unique garbage disposal system. City dwellers could just throw their waste into their courtyard’s pit and a group of designated slaves would pass by to collect their waste on the designated day.

A drainage system was also built in. Underground ditches would be flooded with seawater twice a day, emptying the drainage system of the city. This meant that people who lived in Valletta did not need to deal with the city smells or sights that many other Europeans had to deal with. 

The city was also built in a grid system for a better defensive system in case of future attacks. It was also built in such a way to allow the wind to enter the city, lowering temperatures during the summer months. 

Today, Valletta is a UNESCO World Heritage site, the 2018 European Capital of Culture, and one of the gems of the Mediterranean, both in terms of cultural value as well as the people who live there.

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Johnathan Cilia

Johnathan is an award-winning Maltese journalist interested in social justice, politics, minority issues, music and food. Follow him at @supreofficialmt on Instagram, and send him news, food and music stories at [email protected]