Over ten years ago, I visited San Anton Palace in Malta and wrote a piece about its connection with Queen Marie of Romania and how she spent her happy teenage years there. Her father was Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh (son of Queen Victoria), and her mother was Grand Duchess Maria Alexandrovna of Russia (daughter of Tsar Alexander II). (See link: san-anton-palace-and-romanov-connection
I thoroughly enjoyed the beautiful gardens surrounding the palace. You might also recognise the gardens from Game of Thrones, in the memorable scene where the despicable Joffrey took Sansa Stark to see her father's head on a spike. That scene was filmed in San Anton Gardens.
In those days, visitors could not only enjoy the gardens but also walk through parts of the palace and visit the kitchen gardens behind it. There was a petting zoo, an immense children's playground, and a huge café that was very reasonably priced, with lovely seating both indoors and outdoors.
This month I returned to enjoy the gardens' quiet beauty and perhaps a coffee, only to find that they had been allowed to deteriorate. Stone paths were breaking up beneath my feet, all the turtles had disappeared from the lovely pond, and signs of neglect were evident everywhere.
The palace was closed to the public, as were the kitchen gardens, their grounds, and the café. It has remained closed since August 2024 for extensive refurbishment and restoration works, with no confirmed reopening date.
Today I revisited another old favourite of mine, Sa Maison Gardens on the Floriana Bastions. (See my blog post: sa-maison-gardens-remembering-lady.html) Sadly, this beautiful garden was also in disarray. It has been fenced off since last year because of structural restoration works on the eighteenth-century bastion walls and the conversion of the grounds into new shaded and coastal botanical zones.
It saddens me to think of the loss of all those lovely trees and plants that had a history stretching back to Lady Lockwood's time in the 1840s. For some reason, the lemons from the main trees had an extraordinary fragrance; when scratched, they released a scent reminiscent of the most expensive men's cologne.
I know that Malta faces a constant challenge in maintaining and repairing its vast stock of historic buildings and landscapes. There is so much beauty and history that requires care, nurturing, and investment. However, sometimes when we fix things, we do not preserve them—we destroy them. Clearly, investment continues to be made. It is also clear where the priorities lie, and sadly, historic gardens seem to rank rather low on the list.
City Gate / Parliament / Opera House €100 million
Fort St Elmo €15.5 million
Fort St Angelo €13.4 million
Marina di Valletta €7.5 million
St Elmo Breakwater Bridge €2.8 million
One can only hope that when both these gardens eventually reopen, they will still retain some of the character, charm, and living history that made them such special places in the first place.
