Heritage Malta is going places. In a sense, we have always been travelling. Straddling the trade routes between Europe and North Africa, our history has been shaped by our strategic location at the very epicentre of the Mediterranean.
Colonisers, empire builders, entrepreneurs, diplomats, tradesmen, artists, craftsmen, immigrants, and travellers, have all reached us by sea and air, leaving the imprint of their footsteps, dreams, failures and ambitions through the ages.
Despite scarce natural resources and a challenging arid and windswept environment, generations of resilient farmers have continued to till the soil with their oxen behind limestone rubble walls, whilst resourceful fishermen have continued to plough the seas in their brightly coloured luzzu braving squalls and tempests to feed their families and earn a livelihood.
In the dawn of pre-history, the valleys of the Maltese Islands echoed with the thump of elephant feet, replaced centuries later by the honk of the traditional Maltese buses with their handpainted decorations and typography – it-tberfil.
Using limestone rollers, the peaceful Stone Age settlers transported massive megaliths crisscrossing the land to erect impressive edifices which have withstood the test of time, bequeathing a Neolithic legacy unparalleled in the world. Graffiti of sea vessels carved into the walls of the Tarxien Temples and the old prison in the Gozo Citadel are a testament to the importance of our seafaring past. Migrating Grey Herons above mirroring humans below are still flying their arduous passage over the vast expanse of blue to reach our shores.
Ancient Phoenician and Roman mercantile ships have foundered on the Islands' reefs scattering the sea bed with amphorae and anchors. Grand Masters in their carriages have surveyed the construction of fortified bastions and ramparts designed to repudiate the onslaught of the Turkish armada. Stern Inquisitors have sallied forth from their Palace in Birgu to inspect the Faith, blessing a devout populace from the comfort of their sedans. Bread carts have narrowly avoided colliding with the sedans and carriages of the nobility, trundling into the heart of villages, feeding a hungry nation with wheat transported over from Sicily. Stukas have swooped down from the skies unsuccessfully, trying to obliterate the will and identity of a nation.
When not racing against each other in the September regatta, traditional dgħajjes have plied the waterways of the three cities, servicing the navies of the world and transporting sailors and goods from their ships to the docks and wharves of the Grand Harbour. A princess destined to become a queen has enjoyed the only carefree moments she has ever known, in the capacity of a private citizen, driving her car from a rented villa in Guardamangia to a job in the capital.
Free from jockeys and galloping to a post-depression future, Vincent Apap’s sculpture of stampeding horses pre-empt prime ministers steering a newly independent country over bumpy roads to calmer seas. Today, a Maltese passport ensures that the only Semitic language in Europe has a voice, reverberating down the power corridors of Brussel’s EU Parliament.
Heritage is the way we talk to ourselves about who we are. Our past is part of us. Via the mechanics of collective memory, it shapes our identity and informs our future. Every generation, monument, artefact, language, specimen, and celebration has a story to share.
As guardians of over 8,000 years of history, Heritage Malta, the National Agency for museums, conservation practice and cultural heritage, has been preserving and protecting these narratives and the objects that embody them, handed down from parent to child, artist to curator, artisan to restorer.
Each artefact in this catalogue encapsulates the notion of movement and travel down the millennia, whether by land, sea or air, to get to where we are now, to arrive at whom we have become. But Heritage Malta’s journey does not stop here. As we continue to illuminate our legacy and inspire future generations, new stories will be created which also need to be safeguarded.
Heritage Malta invites you to climb aboard our travelling bus of hopes and dreams to join this journey of celebrating another chapter in our story and alight at a new stage as we launch a new brand identity in tandem with a renewed sense of purpose. Encounter the artefacts featured in this catalogue in Valletta's squares and pjazzez and in all our sites and museums around Malta showcased in the museums which house them. Because you cannot safeguard the past if you do not protect the present, Heritage Malta has used recycled cardboard plinths to display each exhibit as part of its commitment to environmental sustainability.
Our history, personality and identity, the battles fought on these islands, and the people that have come before us, these artefacts sum up what makes us Maltese.
Always part of us, forever in motion, the future of our past promises to be exciting!
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