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History of the Garigor - Edward Cuschieri
from Vigilo 56
by dinlarthelwa
Il-Bebbuxu tal-Majorka TRACING THE HISTORY OF THE
GARIG R
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by Edward Cuschieri
The garigor is found within all building types in Malta and has provided a common experience for most of the inhabitants for centuries. However its attributes are not widely understood.
Glorified by Andrea Palladio in his first treatise I quattro libri dell’ architettura in 1570, the garigor mainly owes its success and widespread use to its utilitarian purposes, as there is no other safer method of climbing up and down that can be accommodated within such a small vertical volume.
Nevertheless, this creative and unique construction is more than a spiral staircase functioning for movement: the introduction and implementation of its open-eyed central void allows for lightness and vision for the users. In other words, the garigor is an unparalleled practical and beautiful geometric solution, and is different from its rudimentary predecessors as spiral staircases.
Traditional spiral staircases date back to classical times. The earliest one documented dates to around 480 BC within the remains of a temple in Selinunte, an ancient Greek city on the south-western coast of Sicily. One of the earliest known Roman influential designs was discovered within the central part of the colossal Trajan’s Column, dating to approximately the first century BC. However, all these early staircases held a central straight and vertically plumb column, called the newel, around which the steps rotate. The garigor’s elaborated geometry evolved where the newel would now also spiral, leaving a void in the centre.
Spiral within the Castel Nuovo, Naples
A typical Maltese garigor
Some years back, while studying an old early eighteenth-century building, I came across its owner, a prominent knight called Ilderis whose family was from Bitonto, an Italian town near Bari in Apulia. In around the 1720s, Ilderis (or Ildaris as he was known in Malta) built for himself what may have been one of the earliest specific agro-architectural buildings in Malta. The building was modelled on his own masseria in Italy, a building typology commonly found in the southern regions of Italy. Within the developments of both properties he built what we would call a garigor, and which he described within historic documents as a ‘caraco’. This is where my intrigue was captured, due to its similarity in intonation and melody.
Some years later, an Instagram image pops up in the middle of the night when a friend showed me an image she that had taken in Tomar in Portugal. My attention was immediately captured by the fascinating staircase on which she was posing, so much so that I stayed awake until the morning hours investigating the building she had visited.
It transpires that this intriguing spiral staircase is located within a stronghold that once belonged to the Knights Templars, who transformed themselves into the Order of Christ in the fifteenth century following their condemnation by the king and pope. The pope’s decree, however, allowed the properties of the Templars to be transferred to the Knights Hospitallers and this gave rise to the building’s eventual embellishment. The wealth of the knights was clearly on display here through the latest architectural fashion and intervention.
Portuguese garigor, Convent of Christ, Tomar (courtesy of Gary Williams)
The garigor's birthplace, La Lonja in Palma de Majorca (Patrimonio Nacional Spain)
Garigor in La Lonja, Valencia, Spain
Within this complex, a masterpiece was constructed, an exemplary king of garigors. This Portuguese garigor is located around the courtyard of the Convent of Christ and was designed by no other than ‘the architect of Portugal’, Juan de Castillo, in around the 1530s.
Looking at the ceiling of my bedroom, I decided to look for its design origins. My research started with a thesis based on the geometrical study of the evolution of types of helical staircases. Among this very interesting reading, it was noted that one of the earliest renowned helical staircases is located in a building in the port of Palma in Majorca. This particular model of garigor, conceived by Guillem Sagrera between 1435-46, was designed within one of the turrets of a coastal building called La Lonja. This represented Majorca’s merchant’s guild and is located on the coast in an area aptly called the Paseo de Sagrera. Further readings based on a history of spiral staircases all referred to such garigors, as what had become known in the trade as a ‘caracol’.
Influenced by this creation in Majorca was another example of garigor, designed by the master Pere Compte at La Lonja of Valencia between 1482 and 1498. This is said to be the first helical staircase built in the whole Iberian Peninsula. Valencia is therefore possibly the second birthplace of the Spanish garigor.
In Spain, this type of staircase was coined as the ‘Caracol de Mallorca’. It came to be applied in all types of buildings, and was fully developed in the early sixteenth century.
Casa Correa by Carlo Gimach showing the prolific use of the domestic 'Garagolo', 1689 (National Library Malta)
The garigor looks like a snail’s interior, therefore it came as no surprise that a Portuguese architect, a colleague at the office, was quick to mention that caracol actually means snail in Spanish and Portuguese. But what about the earliest garigor in Majorca where Catalan is the spoken language? Named caragol, we find the ‘c’ here has been transformed into a ‘g’, which was not an unknown migration over time. A similar example here would be the Latin word cattus which in medieval Latin read as gattus. It eventually develops into gatto in Italian or gato in Spanish and Portuguese. In Maltese, it was transformed into qattus.
An early Majorcan manuscript by Joseph Gelabert called this type of staircase a ‘caragol ull ubert’, meaning ‘open-eyed spiral staircase’. Incidentally, the same architect spread his influence in Italy in the 1450s, while carrying out significant works in Naples within the Castel Nuovo. This Angevin gem treasures a magnificent garigor.
Presumably, as the first garigors in the Iberian mainland date back to just before the turn of the sixteenth century, it is possible to date the introduction of the garigor in Malta to the time when the Order of St John made Malta their home a few decades later. Still in use as a reference in the late seventeenth century we find, among the archives for the 1699 refurbishment planned for the Inquisitor’s palace in Birgu, the term caragolo. In the 1734 Cabreo of Vilhena there is a reference to a property built for a grand Portuguese nobleman in 1689, the Balì of Lesa Fra Antonio Correa de Sousa, which terms its secondary spiral staircases as garagolo.
Here we find the transition of the garigor housed in a square well, as opposed to its predecessor with a cylindrical well. When did this transition first start to take place? Initially housed within military constructions the surrounding walls were built as robustly as possible, with a circular design being the strongest of forms protecting crucial vertical circulation. However, when the garigor migrated in use to more ‘domestic’ building typologies, rectilinear housing wells, being an easier and more economical building procedure, soon became the norm. As their specific construction became well known, their use within buildings as secondary staircases became prolific throughout the island. Early and rare examples of cylindrical welled garigors in Malta can be found within Verdala Palace by Girolamo Cassar, the Jesuit College in Valletta by Francesco Buonamici, and at Palazzo Stagno in Qormi, all designed in the late 1500s.
Could the garigor have been brought over to Malta earlier, by the Aragonese within the short window of time before the Order of St John came to the island? This is unlikely but not inconceivable. Are there any garigors that predate the Order’s arrival in 1530 or do we only find their dark and rudimentary Gothic cousin? The research is still ongoing. n
Original Plan of Jesuit's College, Valletta, 1590s (Bibliotheque Nationale de Paris)
Edward Cuschieri is a design director at AP Valletta. He studied at the Kent Institute of Art & Design, UK, and before joining AP he worked with design firms in London and Milan.
