FOR those of you who would like to see the city of Valetta before its facelift begins, now is the chance. By taking a Boeing 777 Emirates flight to Malta on just about any day of the week, it’s easy to do even over a long weekend. Valetta’s facelift starts early in 2010 and lasts for about four years.
The regeneration of this UNESCO world heritage site is to be engineered by Italian architect Renzo Piano. The government commissioned him to revamp the entrance to Valetta - an area that includes City Gate, the old Opera House site and Freedom Square at a maximum cost of Euro 80 million.
The baroque city is to become the European Cultural Capital in 2018 and it deserved an entrance that befitted this title. Although the entrance had been altered in the 1960s, it was left adrift as it was part of a bigger plan that never evolved, leaving behind a gate that failed to reflect Valetta’s true importance.
The Opera house, which was left in shambles after the site was bombed in 1942, is also about to be rebuilt to host the parliament and its administrative offices.
