The evolution of palace architecture : Valetta and Mdina

Abstract

The spontaneous style evolved by Maltese masons working at the Borgo had some remarkable parallels with the sophisticated ways of the Roman mannerists. Both favoured large, unarticulated wall surfaces with elongated windows and roof lines so high as to leave extensive areas of blank walling above the windows. It seems reasonable to speculate that, caught between the cross currents of a vigorous local tradition and a highly developed Roman style, Gerolamo Cassar, who built Valletta's first palaces, should have reacted by emphasising, and even exaggerating, the qualities which both held in common. So it is that his auberges and Magisterial Palace are even more massive, unadorned and insistently horizontal than their Roman counterparts, epitomised by the Palazzo Farnese, which seems to have exerted as strong influence on Cassar as it did on his Italian contemporaties.