~~ Envisioning the New ‘City of the Order’, Valletta

Conrad Thake
L-Università ta’ Malta, Malta

Abstract
Valletta was conceived as a new fortified city for the Knights of the Order of St John in Malta. In the aftermath of the Great Siege in 1565 and the defeat of the Ottoman Turkish army, it became critical to build a new fortified city on the Sceberras peninsula that separated the two natural harbours. The eminent soldier and military engineer Francesco Laparelli from Cortona was entrusted with the design and planning of the Order’s new city. Laparelli not only submitted four plans which delineated the new city in accordance with Renaissance urban planning but also wrote an architectural treatise which forms an integral part of the Codex Laparelli. This paper will explore the relationship between various theoretical concepts and principles as expounded by Laparelli and the physical evolution and development of Valletta, as one of the finest Renaissance cities in Europe during the second half of the sixteenth century.

Aspects of military defense, city planning, service infrastructure and architectural principles will be considered in studying the dialectic between theoretical issues emanating from Laparelli’s treatise and the physical process of creating the city of Valletta. The new ‘city of the Order’ represents an ideal case study of ‘theory as practice’ within the historical milieu of the sixteenth century. During his brief but eventful stay on the island Laparelli created the physical framework of the city conceived primarily as a fortified military city that would be able to safeguard the Order of St. John from impeding threats by the Ottoman Turks. The convergence of theoretical principles and physicality of the construction and building process will be one of the main themes of the paper.

The victory of the knights of the Order of St John and the Maltese over the Ottoman Turks at the Great Siege of 1565 had served to make it abundantly clear that the building of a new city on the barren Sciberras peninsula was now a matter of the utmost priority. Even before the Great Siege, the knights had recognised that the promontory that separated the two main natural harbours would afford a strategic location for any invading enemy forces to launch artillery attacks on Fort St Angelo and the nearby settlements across the harbour. The Order had already invited a number of established Italian military engineers to study and consider this issue and two of them Bartolomeo Genga and Baldassare Lanci from Urbino had even submitted tangible proposals for a new fortified city to be built on the site.(1) However, indecision on the part of the Order mainly due to an acute shortage of finances had ensured that these urban visions were destined to remain on paper.

The victory over the Turks was the impetus for the construction of a new city for the Order. If anything the Siege victory had served as the ideal public relations opportunity for the Order to appeal to the European courts to provide much needed finances and technical expertise.(2) It was within this context that Pope Pius V had offered to send Francesco Laparelli to Malta. (Figure 1) Laparelli was originally from Cortona and had assisted the eminent military engineer Gabrio Serbelloni with the defences of his hometown. Prior to his arrival in Malta, Laparelli had been in the employment of Pope Pius V and his predecessor Pius IV on works ranging from the fortifications of Civitavecchia, the pentagonal bastions of Castel Sant’Angelo and fortification works on the Vatican Hill. He even had the opportunity to assist Michelangelo with the ongoing construction of the dome of St Peter’s basilica.(3)

The Order entrusted Laparelli with the design of a new fortified city named Valletta after Grand Master Jean de Valette. Time was of the essence as it was feared that the Turks would return again and it is against this backdrop of the threat of another imminent attack that Laparelli set to work. This is well reflected in the architect’s plea “Donami tempo che ti do vita” (‘Give me time and I will give you life’). Upon his arrival on the island on 28 December 1566, just a couple of months after the lifting of the Siege, Laparelli immediately set to work, surveying and measuring the land, and making tentative notes and sketches, before presenting a set of four city plans to the Order’s Council.(4) His notes and reflections on the design and construction of the new city form part of the Codex which today resides in the archives of the Museo dell’Accademia Etrusca di Cortona.(5) Valletta is one of the most well-documented cities of the sixteenth century and eminent historians such as Paolo Marconi, Quentin Hughes, Albert Ganado and Roger Vella Bonavita have through their extensive research provided us with a comprehensive and detailed overview of the genesis and evolution of Valletta.(6) The main objective of this paper is relate to Laparelli’s urban concepts as influenced by contemporary Italian architectural treatises and to discuss some shortfalls between the theoretical principles and the actual construction of the city.

The prime generator of the new city was the need for military defence. The city was first and foremost a war machine, that was very much its raison d’être; all other considerations regarding urban form and aesthetics were secondary in importance. With this defensive programme in mind, strategic military considerations by far outweighed the needs of the inhabitants residing within the city. In fact in the formulation of the four plans Laparelli was initially more concerned with establishing the optimal outline of the fortifications along the enceinte with the elaboration of the landfront fortifications complete with bastions, raised cavaliers, ravelins and dry ditch to guard the more vulnerable landfront approach. The logic of defence ultimately dictated that the planning of the enclosed spaces within the city walls was subservient to the military defence requirements. Basically the configuration and design of the fortification walls and bastions were of critical importance. In as much as Leon Battista Alberti had written:
“Should you examine the various military campaigns undertaken, you would perhaps discover that the skill and ability of the architect have been responsible for more victories than have the command and foresight of any general; and that the enemy were more often overcome by the ingenuity of the first without the other’s weapons, than by the latter’s sword without the former’s good counsel.”(7)

Urban Concepts for the New City
Although the final plan which was the basis of the city as actually built adopts a strict orthogonal grid-iron street pattern and a few urban spaces hemmed in within the fortifications, there are clear indications that initially Laparelli had another urban model in mind. The architect uses the words ‘piacevole e dolce storte’ in describing the street layout and makes specific reference to the serpentine streets of Pisa: “I shall make for beauty only one large street in the middle of the city, the others being narrow and with a pleasant and sweet serpentine way, and this I shall do because a city in a dry, hot place must have narrow streets, whereas cities in humid climates should have wide streets so that the wind and the sun can take away the humidity. Narrow streets are cooler because they are not dominated by the sun. For windy places like Malta, it is necessary to find a way to break the wind with trees or high walls, but this cannot happen here because all the Island and especially this place is bare and without trees, so it will help to make the streets serpentine with sweetness like Pisa, which is fine to see and certainly was made in this way to break the strength of the winds. People should plant trees around the walls which will be useful in peace-time and, in war-time, as wood is one of the most important munitions. Trees which grow quickly should be planted.(8)

His specific reference to Pisa is a rather strange one considering that the city’s terrain is completely flat having been built on reclaimed marshlands at the mouth of the river Arno. Bonavita states that ‘the gracefully curved streets that so impressed Laparelli were originally estuarine waterways which were gradually filled in and turned into streets.’(9) Laparelli’s initial urban concept for the new city was to have one main wide street intertwined with a series of serpentine, picturesque streets, justifying this on the basis of practical and aesthetic reasons. He was certainly influenced by Alberti and Vitruvius who praised the virtues of the beauty of winding streets in small towns and their value from a defence point of view:
“If the city is noble and powerful the streets should be straight and broad, which carries an air of greatness and majesty; but if it is only a small town or fortification, it will be better and as safe for the streets to run straight to the gates, but to have them wind about, sometimes to the right, sometimes to the left, near the wall and especially under the towers upon the wall, and within the heart of the town it will be handsomer not to have them straight, but winding about several ways backwards and forward like the course of a river…(10)”

This model may initially appear to run counter to the ethos of the Renaissance city on the basis of straight lines set along an orthogonal grid or a radial-centric plan. Most of the architecture treatises of the fifteenth and sixteenth century are replete with examples of ideal planned cities.(11) Laparelli was well aware of the anthropomorphic principles of city planning as espoused by Francesco di Giorgio Martini (1439-1501).(12) Even more so, referring to the Laparelli passage previously cited, it is also clear that he was well attuned with the Aristotelian qualities of dryness, humidity, cold and heat. In this aspect he appears to have been familiar with Pietro Cataneo’s treatise I Quattro Primi Libri di Architettura, published twelve years prior to Laparelli’s codex. Cataneo writes:
“Most cities in a cold climate should have wide roads because by means of their wideness they will be more healthy, more commodious and more beautiful; and even if the air is cold it will be less sharp and will not give people colds. And the more a city is in a cold climate and in thin air, and the higher the buildings, the wider should be the roads. But if the city is in a hot climate, if its roads are narrow and buildings are high, they will temper the heat of the site and they will be healthier.”(13)

Conceptualizing the form of the city
Laparelli’s original concept of having a main central axis interspersed with serpentine streets as described in his written account was not pursued further. There is no evidence that he actually drew a plan based on this idea or if he actually did do so, such a plan has to date not surfaced. It is not clear what motivated Laparelli to change course. One can only speculate as to the reasons that led to the abandonment of this initial concept. The Sciberras peninsula upon which the new city was to be founded was entirely devoid of any buildings or structures except for a small rudimentary fort at its tip. The elevated promontory sloping steeply to the foreshore along its sides was totally unlike that of Pisa. The architect himself or the Order considering the local context could have decided that having serpentine streets weaving along a central axis was too experimental and impractical to implement. The centuries-old practise of subdividing land into a regular grid was considered to be a safer and more straightforward method of planning and of overseeing the construction of the new city within the shortest period of time possible. Having serpentine winding streets would also have proved unpractical in terms of allocating different blocks to the individual Langues of the Order in what would have been irregular plots of land. There could also well have been serious objections to having winding narrow streets from a defence and military point of view.

The four known plans prepared by Laparelli and submitted to the Order’s Council for its approval instead adopted a strict orthogonal grid of streets of varying widths. There are variations in the different plans as Laparelli modified the earlier larger square block subdivision into a city plan that presented a greater variety of rectangular blocks narrowing in depth as one moved away from the city centre.(14). Giacomo Bosio, the contemporary historian of the Order, describes Valletta as being much more attractive than any other Italian city stating that its true design was drawn from life and given its natural shape in the way in which it is now to be seen by the knight Fra Francesco dell’Antella from Florence.(15) The splendid aerial view of Valletta was apparently displayed in Bosio’s own personal residence and was later reproduced in the form of an engraving by Vallamena as one of the illustrations in his book on the history of the Order of St John.(16)

The enterprise of building the city

Once the plans for the new city were approved, Laparelli immediately embarked on translating his urban vision from paper into stone and mortar. The urban morphology of the city as realized closely reflects the final plan that was approved. However there were a few important urban concepts that never came to fruition. In his third and final fourth plan of the city, Laparelli had delineated a fine red line around the main central blocks which boundary has been interpreted as defining the footprint of the collacchio. Prior to the Order’s arrival in Malta when based in Rhodes, the Knights had resided in an urban enclave that was set apart and physically segregated by walls from the rest of the local population.(17) The various auberges or hostels of the various langues constituting the Order, the conventual church, hospital, armoury and other facilities were all originally accommodated within the collacchio that was reserved exclusively for the Order’s use. Although in his plan Laparelli did delineate the precise boundaries of the collacchio, the Order decided not to adhere to it. The Order’s various buildings were dispersed throughout the city. It could well have been the case that the Order had re-evaluated the collacchio model and deemed it to be too restrictive in physical terms and an anachronism from medieval times.

In his third and fourth plans, Laparelli had proposed the creation of a mandracchio on the side of the city facing Marsamxett. The mandracchio was a small inland harbour that would be connected to the sea by means of a narrow channel cut through the fortifications. It was intended to provide shelter to the Order’s galleys in times of inclement weather. Laparelli first delineated it in the form of an oval or kidney-shaped harbour and subsequently in his fourth and final plan, simplified it into a plain rectangular form. The Order appeared to be keen on realizing this concept and one of the planning and building regulations explicitly stated that stone to be used for the construction of buildings within the city could only be procured either from the excavation of the actual building site or procured from the site where the mandracchio would be formed.(18) However, it soon transpired that the limestone quarried from the area was of poor quality which rendered it unsuitable for construction. Furthermore, it became evident that the Order’s fleet of galleys could not realistically be accommodated within the projected man-made harbour. The mandracchio project was abandoned and the area soon degenerated into an unregulated maze of hovels and ramshackle structures that was dysfunctional and morphologically unrelated to the rest of the city.

Laparelli should not be perceived as an idealistic architectural theoretician. He was first and foremost a pragmatist with a keen interest in the physical properties of building materials, construction methods and resolving challenges encountered on the site. Insights of these can be gleaned from his notes in the codex. Laparelli complained about the scarcity of building materials, labour resources and even basic provisions of food in Valletta. He stated that in this place, there is no lime, water, sand, timber, iron to be worked, earth, fascines, men and every other kind of wood, because this Island is really a bare rock. Also for vitals, there is no bread, wine, meat, oil and, considering we are in the middle of the sea, we get little fish.(19) This statement implied that most of the building material had to be brought over to the building site and that workmen had to be engaged from abroad. Laparelli discussed in specific detail technical issues relating to the building materials and their properties. He noted that since there was no supply of hard stone like travertine in Malta, it was not possible to span certain distances as local stone was weak in tension and would crack when loaded. He was particularly concerned that if the rock was newly cut the exposed faces of the fortification walls could collapse when under enemy attack. Laparelli stated that local stone resisted artillery fire well but time eroded it. He recommended that newly-constructed walls were to be kept damp so that the mortar had time to set, and the mortar itself had to be kept wet so that the heat would not damage it.(20) In May he was overseeing works on the ramparts so that the heat and the wind would not dry out the mortar and cause it to pulverise into powder. In fact he gave explicit instructions that during the hot summer months from June to September construction works be suspended although stonework should still be cut so as to be ready when works resumed in the cooler season.

By 1567 Laparelli reported that the fortifications could now resist enemy attack and that the critical landfront with its ramparts and cavaliers was at an advanced stage of construction. The bastions and curtain walls were progressing well. The Italian architect was by now becoming restless and relishing a new challenge overseas. In 1569 Laparelli volunteered for service with the papal fleet and sailed from Malta. The realisation and completion of the blueprint of the new city was entrusted to his assistant, the capable Maltese engineer and architect Gerolamo Cassar.(21) Prior to his departure from the island, Laparelli offered some valuable advice:

“No fortifications is an end in itself – when there is a siege it is always necessary to get help from outside. It is important that the fortifications should resist long enough for the allies to be able to prepare a good relieving army. Everyone knows that Malta is important to Christianity. The Island has been called many things including a ‘thorn in the eye of the Infidel’. The Order must always spend much money to defend the Island when others have easier tasks.(22)

Laparelli would never return to Malta. He did not have the satisfaction of seeing the city he created completed. In 1570, whilst serving on the campaign at Candia in Crete he contracted the plague and died at the age of forty-nine.

REFERENCES:
1 Albert Ganado, Valletta Città Nuova – A Map History (1566-1600) (Malta: PEG Ltd, 2003); Francesco Menchetti, Architects and Knights – Italian Influence in Malta during the Late Renaissance (Malta: Progress Press, 2013).
2 D.J.Calnan, The True Depiction of the Investment and Attack suffered by the Island of Malta at the hands of the Turks in the year of Our Lord 1565 by Matteo Perez d’Aleccio, (Malta: Progress Press, 1965), third edition.
3 Francesco Laparelli was born in Cortona in 1521. He participated in the War of Siena and the fortifications of Cortona in 1554. He worked with the eminent engineer Gabrio Serbelloni and collaborated with Michelangelo on the building of St Peter’s, Rome. The main biographical texts on Francesco Laparelli are: Filippo Venuti, Vita del capitano Francesco Laparelli (Livorno, 1761); Pier Luigi Occhini, Un grande Italiano del 500: Francesco Laparelli a Malta (Arezzo: R. Deputazione di Storia Patria per la Toscana, 1937); Eduardo Mirri (ed.), Francesco Laparelli architetto cortonese a Malta (Cortona: Tiphys Edizioni, 2009); Roger Vella Bonavita, “Capitano Francesco Laparelli and Valletta,” in Proceedings of History Week (Malta: Malta Historical Society, 2013), 1-28. The most recent and comprehensive biographical account is that of Roger Vella Bonavita, “A Gentleman of Cortona: the Life and Achivements of Capitano Francesco Laparelli da Cortona (1521-1570)” (PhD thesis, University of Malta, 2011).
4 Quentin Hughes, “Give me Time and I will give you Life – Francesco Laparelli and the building of Valletta, 1565-1569,” Town Planning Review 49 (1978), 61-74.
5 The Laparelli Codex was originally in the private archives of the Contessa Laparelli Pitti Magi Diligenti. In 2009 it was donated to the Accademia Etrusca in Cortona.
6 Paolo Marconi, “Progetti Inediti della Valletta: Dal Laparelli al Floriani,” L’Architettura a Malta. Atti del XV Congresso di Storia dell’Architettura, (Roma: Centro di Studi per la Storia dell’Architettura, 1970), 353- 86; J. Quentin Hughes, “The Planned City of Valletta,” ibidem, 305-33; Quentin Hughes, “Documents on the Building of Valletta,” Melita Historica VII (1976), 1-16; Albert Ganado, Valletta Città Nuova. A Map History (1566-1600), (Valletta: Peg Publishing, 2003).
7 Leon Battista Alberti, On the Art of Building in Ten Books, translated by Joseph Rykwert, Neil Leach, Robert Travernor (MIT Press, 1988), 4.
8 Francesco Laparelli, Codex, (written in Malta, 1566-1567), Museo dell’Accademia Etrusca di Cortona, 27B.
9 Roger Vella Bonavita, “Capitano Francesco Laparelli and Valletta,” in Proceedings of History Week 2011, Malta Historical Society, (Malta, 2013), 7, fn. 21. Bonavita identifies the urban district along ‘the gentle curves of Via Santa Maria’ as potentially being the area to which Laparelli was alluding to.
10 Leon Battista Alberti, Ten Books on Architecture, James Leone’s translation, (London, 1755), Book IV, chapter 5, 85.
11 Maurice J.D. Cockle, A Bibliography of Military Books up to 1642, (London: Holland Press, 1957), lists 71 books and editions of fortifications published during the sixteenth century alone.
12 Francesca P.Fiore and Manfredo Tafuri (eds.), Francesco di Giorgio Martini architetto (Milano, 1998); Francesco de Marchi, Della Architettura Militari (Brescia, 1599).
13 Pietro Cataneo, I Quattro Primi Libri di Architettura (Venezia, 1554), Lib. 1, Cap. 6, 8R.
14 T. Jäger, “The Art of Orthogonal Planning, Laparelli’s Trigonometric Design of Valletta,” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, vol. 63, n. 1 (2004), 11.
15 Giacomo Bosio, Istoria della Sacra Religione Militare di S. Giovanni Gerosolimitano (Roma, 1594-1602), vol. 3, 872.
16 For detailed accounts on the building and planning regulations promulgated by the Order refer to Stephen Borg Cardona, “The Officio delle Case and the Housing Laws of the earlier Grand Masters 1531-1569”, The Law Journal vol. 3, n. 1 (1951); Edward Sammut, “L’Officio delle Case ed i regolamenti per la fabrica della Valletta (1556-1629),” L’Architettura a Malta – Atti del XV Congresso di Storia dell’Architettura, (Roma: Centro di Studi per la Storia dell’Architettura, 1970), 387-97.
17 Quentin Hughes, “Documents on the Building of Valletta,” Melita Historica, vol. 7, No. 1, (1976) 4.
18 Stephen Borg Cardona, “The Officio delle Case and the Housing Laws of the earlier Grand Masters 1531-1569”, The Law Journal, vol. 3, n. 1 (1951).
19 Laparelli, Codex, 26B.
20 Ibidem, 20B, cited in Quentin Hughes, “The Planned City of Valletta,” L’Architettura a Malta – Atti del XV Congresso di Storia dell’Architettura (Roma: Centro di Studi per la Storia dell’Architettura, 1970), 329-30.
21 Giovanni Mangion, “Girolamo Cassar architetto maltese del Cinquecento,” Melita Historica, vol. 6, n. 2 (1973), 192-200; Quentin Hughes, The Building of Malta during the Period of the Knights of St John of Jerusalem 1530-1795 (London: Alec Tiranti, 1956).
22 Laparelli, Codex, 62B-63.