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ViGiLO - Din l-Art Ħelwa ISSUE 57 • MAY 2022
BAROQUE
TRANSFORMING AND THE‘Officio
T
his study by Mevrick Spiteri presents the development of the urban and socio-economic fabric of Valletta from 1650 to 1750. By then it had evolved into a dynamic and culturally diverse city, a centre of commercial activity, politics and religion, with a rapidly growing population. Unlike various other studies on the buildings of Valletta to date, the author’s principal interest does not lie in studying the architecture and aesthetics of the city’s outstanding monumental edifices—its churches, palaces, auberges, or fortifications. Instead, he focuses his lens on a broader spectrum of buildings. He is interested in the ‘architecture of space’, including ‘ordinary’ or residential architecture, providing a basis for understanding the development of the city’s urban society and economy over time. Spiteri highlights that Valletta’s urban fabric is not only defined by its monumental architecture or its public spaces. He notes that each part of the entire built space of the city has its own history to recount. This book pays attention to civil architecture, that is, buildings which are not military, religious or governmental. The author divides these into four main types in Baroque Valletta— the palace (palazzo), the large building (palazzino), the smaller building, and groups of small rooms. While varying in scale and architectural details, civil buildings developed according to a traditional house plan, generally consisting of spaces organised around an internal courtyard. Property and its regulation was of great importance to the Order of St John from the first days of the city. Already in the sixteenth century, the Order had set up a regulatory and judicial body known as the Officium Commissariorum Domorum, better known as the Officio delle Case. This body oversaw and regulated the construction of buildings, in line with a set of evolving planning and
building regulations, also taking aesthetics into consideration. The Officio delle Case is the focus of this study, providing a very important and largely untapped source of archival documentation on the development of Valletta. Besides information on architecture, this material also provides valuable insights into the social relations and economic activity of Valletta, between the sixteenth and the eighteenth centuries. The judiciary volumes, for example, record numerous and wide-ranging social disputes, amongst property owners, tenants, and capo maestri builders or contractors. In these cases, a cross-section of society participated in discussions on the spatial organisation and construction of buildings, revealing a wealth of information about the residents of Valletta and their means, concerns and aspirations. The period under review is of special interest due to the transformation of Valletta that occurred then. In the midseventeenth century, the earlier concept of large living spaces began to shift. The city was overpopulated and commercial activity was on the increase. Some owners became more interested in the economic potential of their properties. As a result, smaller spaces were created by dividing single properties into different households, often with their own entrances, thus completely changing internal layouts. House divisions were sometimes prompted by inheritance disputes, but more frequently they were carried out for financial gain and economic considerations. Spiteri notes that this process of transformation, “segregated and redefined the older larger structures into a conglomeration of varied-scaled buildings occupied by separate houses and commercial spaces”. Botteghe were opened at street level. Rooms with high ceilings were transformed with the insertion of mezzanine. Different social groups and strata
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