Landscapes in Paper and Place: Rethinking geo-spaces through Malta's Cabrei and Country Maps

The 8th edition of the National Library of Malta’s Public Lectures Series focuses on Malta’s historic landscapes as recorded in Cabrei and Country Maps from the 17th to 20th centuries.

This year’s series is coordinated by Mevrick Spiteri, Daniel Borg, and André Debattista, also lecturers at the University of Malta; and it is brought up in collaboration with the Public Works Department.

This series gives special attention to the archival record – the Cabreo and accompanying administrative registers – which encapsulate important elements crucial for the valorisation of Malta’s landscapes. The series discusses Cabrei (legally binding land registers or property books), manuscript maps, survey sheets on a national scale, and descriptive land registers. It adopts a multidisciplinary approach, emphasising links between land and people. Rethinking Malta’s geo-spaces through diachronic perspectives, as captured ‘in paper and place’, offers a firmer contextualised approach of territorial administration, land management practices, and environmental changes; bridging archival research, historical geography, and GIS. Overall, the series is intended to take stock of the current state of research, introduce innovative approaches to Malta’s modern historic landscapes, and open new avenues for collaborative research.

The National Library of Malta will hold its first public lecture on ‘Revisiting Malta’s Cabrei: Property books from the Knights’ period at the National Library of Malta’ to be delivered by Mevrick Spiteri. The lecture will focus on the collection of cabrei, or property books, preserved within the National Library’s second largest archival collection.

29 October 2025 - Revisiting Malta’s Cabrei: Property books from the Knights’ period at the National Library of Malta – Mevrick Spiteri

28 November 2025 - Historical Cartography in the Digital Age: Applications of GIS and WebGIS – Daniel Fenech, Christopher Gauci, Martha Piscopo, George Buhagiar and Emanuele Colica

17 December 2025 - Malta's Hidden Springs and other water sources: Unearthing Late Medieval and Early Modern Water Technology via Cabreo documentation – Keith Buhagiar

28 January 2026 - Contrasting the 1957 Aerial Survey and the 1896–1927 Joint Ordnance Survey: Shoreline Change Appraisal as a Catalyst for Historical Research – Christopher Gauci and Daniel Fenech

27 March 2026 - A Diachronic Evaluation of the Selmun Landscape: Using the Cabreo del Monte della Redenzione and Other Sources for Historical Landscape Analysis – Daniel Borg

29 April 2026 - Anthropomorphic features in Maltese landscapes: addressing issues of food security, soil protection, and rainwater harvesting – Avertano Rolé

All lectures start at 18:30. Free entrance. No booking required.

Further information is available by sending an email.