Vigilo Books

TRANSFORMINGBAROQUE

AND THE‘Officio delle Case’

This 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

VALLETTA

‘Officio delle Case’By Petra Caruana Dingli

thus lived and co-existed side by side. This rebuilding and restructuring throughout the city generated intense construction activity. Houses were generally not demolished but reconstructed, while salvaging and reusing masonry to reduce the costs.

The result of this trend is still evident today, with many old buildings—which were originally one unified property—split up into smaller and more confined separate dwellings, also with resized and reduced courtyards, as can readily be seen from the many fragmented old façades with multiple entrances.

These new spatial reconfigurations radically changed the use and social meanings of space—which Spiteri marks out as public, semi-private, or contested spaces. Unsurprisingly, these divisions generated constant disagreements, confrontation, and litigation.

Many of these house-related disputes were dealt with by the Officio delle Case. The cases often revolved around the use of resources, such as water cisterns, shared courtyards or access. They disputed privacy and encroachment onto personal spaces, such as neighbouring windows overlooking courtyards, or the obstruction of windows, or the addition of balconies, windows or chimneys. Other quarrels centred on sanitation and waste, the contamination of water, or the use of ovens. Neglected houses, maintenance, and leases were also common topics. Spiteri gives a detailed account of a range of cases, exposing perceptions of public and private space at this period.

In this work, Spiteri demonstrates the advantages of a multi-disciplinary perspective. He amply shows that archival sources enrich and widen historical perspectives gained through the study of the architecture of buildings. He also provides an excellent and informative overview of the workings of the Officium Commissariorum Domorum, and the

BOOK Review

Mevrick Spiteri, The Houses of Baroque Valletta 1650–1750: Property Redevelopment From Records of the ‘Officio delle Case’– Socio-economic Reflections on Civil Buildings (Malta: Midsea Books, 2021), pp. 319. Published in collaboration with the International Institute for Baroque Studies at the University of Malta, and the National Archives of Malta.

relevant documentation extant in the National Archives of Malta.

Along the way, Spiteri also structures a typology of houses in Baroque Valletta, and establishes an effective methodology for the study of the city’s spatial transformations over time. Finally, his work provides a fresh understanding of urban Malta in the early modern period, presenting some of the background that shaped the redevelopment of Valletta.

In this perceptive and detailed piece of research, the study of buildings leads to the writing of urban history, and to a deeper appreciation of the socio-economic life of Valletta in the Baroque Age. Such knowledge helps us, as a community, to gain better insight into the values that we assign to our cultural and built heritage, particularly as we apply them to Valletta today as a living city. n