Stop 09 of 15

Great Siege Square

Three bronze figures and a missing auberge

Narration · 2 min

Have it read to you while you look at the thing itself, hands in pockets.

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Guide to Great Siege Square

A small square with a bronze monument to the Great Siege in the middle of it, and — read together — the clearest short lesson in Valletta about what the twentieth century did to the city. A sixteenth-century church, a 1920s monument to a 1565 siege, and a 1970s courthouse standing where a bombed auberge used to be.

The monument

The bronze is the Great Siege Monument, cast in 1927 by Antonio Sciortino, whose Les Gavroches stands up in the Upper Barrakka. Three women are grouped back to back on the plinth, personifying Faith, Fortitude and Civilisation.

It commemorates 1565, but it was made in the 1920s, when Malta was arguing hard about its own identity under British rule. The three virtues are doing political work as well as historical.

The gap behind it

The long colonnaded building is the Law Courts, and they are modern — 1970s. What stood here before was the Auberge d'Auvergne, another of the eight knights' inns, built in the 1570s and destroyed in an air raid in 1941.

Roughly one building in two around the harbour was hit or flattened across those three years. A few were put back as copies of what had stood there, others were replaced by whatever the following two decades could pay for, and some sites are car parks to this day. An abrupt change of character halfway along a Valletta street is usually that history showing through.

What to look at

  • The three figures back to back — Faith with the cross, Fortitude with the sword, Civilisation with the book
  • The change in stone colour between the 1970s courts and the older buildings either side
  • Wreaths at the base: this is still an active site of national commemoration

Practical

Access
Open square, always accessible. The Law Courts are a working courthouse.
Shade
Very little. Stand on the cathedral side in the afternoon.

Walk to stop 10

Carry on along Republic Street, away from City Gate, for one minute. The street opens on your left into a square filled with café tables, with a white marble statue of a seated queen in the middle.

About 2 min · 110 m