Floriana’s garden jewels : the Argotti and St Philip Gardens

Abstract

The Knights of St John bequeathed several famous legacies to the island during their sojourn in Malta amongst which are a number of historical gardens. Floriana, the town at the outskirts of Valletta, has been described as Malta’s garden city because of its large concentration of historical gardens and open spaces embellished with fountains and exotic trees and shrubs. Most of these gardens are located on the fortifications that surround Floriana. The Argotti and St Philip Gardens are especially unique in that their setting provides them with a high vantage point, which, up to some fifty years ago, would have commanded beautiful vistas of the surrounding land extending to the Rabat-Dingli plateau and, closer still, to Marsamxetto harbour and marina. The two gardens are immersed in almost three centuries of history making them unique for Malta and prestigious elsewhere. Indeed, the Argotti Gardens are the third oldest in the Commonwealth after that of Oxford (1632) and Edinburgh (1670). This paper describes in detail the origin and development of these two historical gardens, relying wherever possible on historical documents and literature, and invariably, the occasional anecdotal evidence.