Later this month the National Library of Malta will be holding its last public lecture as part of the ‘Urban Landscapes’ series. The lecture will be delivered by Mevrick Spiteri and is entitled 'Malta’s harbour in 1798 – the transformation of a new urban landscape'. Spiteri's lecture will focus on how Malta’s main harbour underwent continuous change since the arrival of the Knights.
The urban form pictured in several fortification maps shows uninterrupted change occurring in the harbour since the arrival of the Order of St John in Malta. Urban life developed within the harbour, revolving around its waters, along its fortifications and in the cities. In Valletta’s case, the city came to define what we now understand to mean 'a built-structure' in which social, economic and political dynamism impel the transformation of the new urban space. The transformation of the new urban space restructured the older notion of building spacious edifices for the habitation of knights and the ensuing multi-use and re-purposing of property thus dilutes today's emphasis on the definition of ‘original designs’. In the long durée, Valletta's co-existing social groups and ‘nations’ achieved changing human tastes and lifestyles as seen amongst knights, the middle class, servants and merchants.
This lecture brings to a close a series of 8 public lectures held at the National Library in 2018-2019. The series, 'Cities, Harbours, and Artefacts: transformations of an early modern landscape' coordinated by the same Mevrick Spiteri and Maroma Camilleri, focused on Malta’s urban landscapes, archives and archaeology.
The lecture, which is free of charge, will be held on Friday 28 June 2019 at 18:30 at the National Library, Valletta.
Further information can be found on the National Library of Malta facebook page.
For queries, email: events.library@gov.mt.