Grand Masters Palace (Valletta)
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The Grand Master's Palace ( English Grandmaster's Palace ), the Maltese only il-Palazz ( German "the palace" called), is a erected in the 16th century palace in the Maltese capital Valletta . This largest secular building in the city served as the official residence of the various rulers of the archipelago over the centuries. Today the Grand Master's Palace, which is partially open to the public, is one of the most visited sights in Malta. The building is closed to visitors during official state receptions in the palace.
Location in the city area
The Grand Master's Palace is located in the center of the smallest capital of an EU state, which has been expanded into a fortress . Due to the orientation of the city, the four corners point exactly to the north, east, south and west. It occupies an entire block in the street network that runs at right angles. The Triq L'-Arcisqof (Archbishop Street) runs on its northeast side and the Triq Il-Merkanti (Merchants Street) runs on the southeast side. On the northwest side is the Palace Square, which is formed by the continuous Triq Ir-Repubblika (Republic Street), and on the southwest side the Triq It-Teatru L-Antik (Old Theater Street), which, however, is half the width of the street block, which the palace occupies, forms Republic Square, which is also connected to Republic Street.
history
After the Order of Malta at least slowed the expansion of the Ottoman Empire in the First Great Siege of Malta in 1565 and unexpectedly expelled the 40,000-strong Turkish army from the archipelago after more than three months of fighting, the order's influence in the Mediterranean region grew . The European noble houses respected and valued the knights after the victory over their common enemy and recognized the strategically favorable position of Malta, which prevented a renewed advance of the Ottomans at sea. For this reason, they granted financial support to the Order.
After the completion of construction on a new fortress-like capital, after winning the Turkish siege Grand Master , Jean de la Valette , Valletta was called, the Order acquired a 1569 built in the walls of wooden buildings and began in 1571 with the construction of a new Main house for the grandmasters. The structural engineering management was taken over by the Malta-born architect Gerolamo Cassar , who had already been responsible for the execution of the overall plan for the design of the capital as assistant and successor to Francesco Laparelli . Construction was difficult and a logistical challenge. Since all rooms had wooden ceilings, but wood was and is an extremely rare raw material in Malta, it had to be imported from mainland Europe. The entire construction was completed in 1575.
In the years that followed, the palace underwent some minor structural changes, but these did not have any significant effect on its external appearance. In the 1720s, the previously barren hallways and corridors were artistically decorated by the Italian painter Nicolau Nasoni (* 1691; † 1773) from Siena . From 1575 to 1798 a total of 21 grand masters of the Order of Malta resided in the building before the islands were occupied by Napoléon Bonaparte's troops during the Egyptian expedition and the order moved to Petersburg (see also Ferdinand von Hompesch zu Bolheim , last grand master in Malta) . The French soldiers looted and damaged the Grand Master's Palace. However, the damage was repaired by the British two years later, after they occupied Malta after a brief naval blockade and established it as a crown colony a little later .
From then on, the palace served as the official residence of the British governors responsible for the islands for 128 years. One of them, Sir John Gaspard la Marchand , who was in office from 1858 to 1864 , had the corridors on the upper floor of the palace laid out with marble. The first Maltese Parliament met in one of the rooms in 1921, and since 1976 the palace has also been the official seat of the President of the Republic of Malta, which has been independent since 1964 . In 1980 the Grand Master's Palace was included in the UNESCO World Heritage List as part of the Valletta ensemble .
description
The Grand Master's Palace has a rectangular floor plan and is 97 meters long and 83 meters wide. This makes it the largest building in Valletta in terms of area. It was built from local limestone . This is Malta's only natural resource and is still used today for many new buildings. Externally, the two-story palace is kept extremely simple and reflects the usual architectural rigor of the 16th century. Apart from small decorations, the wooden bay windows on the west and north corners as well as the two richly decorated baroque portals on Palace Square on the north-west side are the only decorative elements. However, they were only installed a good two centuries after the palace was completed. The bay windows replaced the old iron balconies in 1741.
Originally the palace only had the entrance portal on Palace Square, which is further north, i.e. closer to Archbishop Street. It turns into a large vestibule that leads into the Neptune's Courtyard. The more southerly portal, closer to Republic Square, was, like the bay windows, only constructed under the reign of Grand Master Manuel Pinto de Fonseca . It leads to the Prince Alfred Courtyard.
The 18th century Scottish traveler Patrick Brydone noted in his notes after a visit to Valletta:
- "The Grand Master (who values comfort more than splendor) lodges more comfortably and spaciously than any prince in Europe, with the exception of possibly the King of Sardinia ."
patio
1 = Entrance Corridor
2 = Armory Corridor
3 = Chamber of Representatives
4 = Grand Council Chamber
5 = State Dining Hall
6 = Supreme Council Hall
7 = Ambassador's Room
8 = Page's Waiting Room
9 = Prince of Wales' Corridor
There are two inner courtyards within the palace complex. These formerly formed a large, contiguous open space before they were separated by the construction of a new wing of the building, they were connected to one another via a staircase.
The Prince Alfred Courtyard, measuring 30 × 27 meters, has three entrances, one of which is on Old Theater Street or Republic Square. It was originally planted with orange trees. In 1858, Prince Alfred , the second son of the British Queen Victoria , visited the islands of Malta and Gozo . In his honor, the British governor le Marchand had the courtyard redesigned and named after him. Today a palm tree, a Chilean araucaria , jacaranda and sticky seeds grow in this courtyard . There is also a fountain there. A tower clock has been on one of the building wings since 1745. It is attributed to the Maltese watchmaker Gaetano Vella and was installed under the reign of the Grand Master Manuel Pinto de Fonseca . The clock has four rotating discs. One serves as a dial for the time, the others show the day, month and moon phase . Four bronze figures depicting colored slaves in Ottoman uniforms strike with small hammers every hour on the hour.
The 18 × 43 meter Neptune's Courtyard is located on a slightly higher level north of the Prince-Alfred-Courtyard and contains numerous palm trees, bushes, trees and beds. It can be reached via a gate from Palace Square. Its most distinctive feature is a nude bronze statue of the Roman god of flowing waters and the sea, Neptunus , from whom it owes its name, standing on a marble base . The figure is holding a trident in its right hand and leaning on a stylized watercourse with the left . The statue was erected in a fish market in the south of the city in 1615 and placed in the courtyard in 1861 by order of British governor la Marchand. After several years of deterioration, it was restored by a local brewery in the early 21st century. Before the restoration, the figure's genital area was covered by a sheet. This was not there from the beginning, however, but was only attached to the sculpture under the reign of a very conservative grand master. The brewery had the sheet removed so that the statue can now be seen in its original state. Opposite the gate entrance there is a water feature behind the statue . Water runs down a wall that bears the coat of arms of the former Grand Master Ramon Perellos y Roccaful . The fountain used to be used as a horse trough. The courtyard is surrounded by a cloister, on the walls of which there are numerous coats of arms, which were removed from bastions and public buildings between 1798 and 1800 on the orders of Napoléon Bonaparte and in some cases badly damaged.
Premises
Similar to the Italian Renaissance palaces, the first floor of the building, the piano nobile , was the most important in the Grand Master’s Palace . The splendid rooms were located here, while the stables , the servants' quarters and shops were on the ground floor . Nowadays there are many offices and some government ministries on the ground floor. The wooden ceilings of the rooms are mostly coffered ceilings supported by beams resting on consoles .
A spiral staircase leading from the Prince-Alfred-Courtyard leads to the upper rooms. The steps were laid out very flat out of consideration for the knights in heavy armor and older grandmasters. The staircase is wide enough to accommodate a litter . This staircase was built during the reign of the 52nd Grand Master Hugues Loubenx de Verdale . In the Piano Nobile the stairs meet a kind of anteroom, which is formed from the angle of two corridors. The one on the right merges into the 31-meter-long Armory Corridor, which lies in the wing that separates the two courtyards and runs from northwest to southeast. He is flanked on both sides by rank and file knight armor. Various large coats of arms adorn the marble floor, including that of the 44th Grand Master Philippe de Villiers de l'Isle-Adam , that of the famous 49th Grand Master and Maltese national hero Jean de la Valette and the current one of the Republic of Malta. The walls and the ceiling are decorated with numerous large-scale paintings. From this corridor, rooms branch off on one side, while the other side has large windows to the Neptune's Courtyard. There are bezels above the doors and windows . The ones above the windows date from the first quarter of the 18th century and were created by Nicolau Nasoni . The one opposite was made by the Maltese painter Giovanni Bonello a good 160 years later. Both series show Maltese and Gozitan landscapes.
The corridor leading in a line from the anteroom at the top of the spiral staircase, the Entrance Corridor, runs parallel to the northwest side of the palace and also has numerous paintings by Nasoni. In this area of the palace, however, the lunettes do not show landscapes, but some of the naval battles between the order and the Ottoman Empire . Armor and paintings of the grand masters also line this corridor.
The Prince of Wales' Corridor joins the end of the Entrance Corridor at a right angle to the southeast. This got its name in 1862 after a visit by the then British Crown Prince and later King Edward VII. On this corridor are the offices of the Maltese President, which are not open to the public and which were previously used as private apartments for the Grand Masters. Adjacent to this are the offices of the former British governors. The Prince of Wales 'Corridor also has bezels that represent the knights' successes in naval warfare .
Grand Council Chamber
The Grand Council Chamber is the first room on the right after the spiral staircase from the Armory Corridor. The Legislature of the Order of Malta met there, but he was also part of the grandmasters' private band for a long time. As such, it had the Minstrel's Gallery above the entrance, a gallery on which the choir sat and which had been made from the stern of the Great Carrack of Rhodes . In this carrack , the Grand Master Philippe de Villiers de l'Isle-Adam fled from the Ottoman fleet under Suleyman I of Rhodes in 1522 . The gallery, covered with gold leaf, has been sculptured down to the smallest details and has six panels depicting creation .
The room has an ornate and carved wooden ceiling, but under it a makeshift ceiling was put in place for more than a hundred years. Its installation was based on an order from the same grand master who also had the bronze leaf attached to the statue of Neptune. Over the years it was forgotten that there was a much more splendid ceiling above the plain ceiling, before it was accidentally stumbled upon during repair work.
During English colonial rule, the Grand Council Chamber was converted into an office for the Governor's Secretary and the Minstrel's Gallery, which was built into the Supreme Council Hall, was removed. The governors use the spacious hall to deliver their speeches. The remaining murals in the Grand Council Chamber are believed to be the oldest in the entire palace and depict episodes from the life of John the Baptist , the patron saint of the order.
The most distinctive and famous furnishings in the Grand Council Chamber are ten tapestries , which is why the room is also known as the Tapestry Hall . The carpets were a gift from the 64th Grand Master Ramon Perellos y Roccaful . At that time, a newly elected Grand Master was expected to present a gift to the order, a so-called Gioja . The production of the fine tapestries took several years. Roccaful was chosen in 1697 and commissioned the tapestries from the tapestry factory in Paris , where they could only be completed after 13 years. The carpets form a series of pictures called Les Tentures des Indes , inspired by stories from the early 17th century about the hunting adventures of a German prince in the then exotic regions of Brazil, Africa, India and the Caribbean. Drawings for these trips came to the court of the French King Louis XIV in 1679. Wild animals, indigenous people and rainforest vegetation can be seen on the carpets, but the depictions are often exaggerated and romanticized by today's standards. Each of the carpets contains a knitted pear, as this fruit was part of the coat of arms of Perellos y Roccaful.
The spaces between the tapestries and the coffered ceiling are decorated with paintings. They mostly show warlike operations of the ships of the order and also twelve allegorical figures that embody Christian and ancient Roman virtues.
The Maltese Parliament met in the Grand Council Chamber from 1921 to 1976 before moving into the former armory. Even today, behind small wooden desks, the Members' wooden chairs, covered with red velvet, stand. During a particularly heated discussion, one politician threw an inkwell at another MP. It missed, however, and the ink hit one of the carpets. It could be washed out, but since that incident, MPs in the Grand Council Chamber have only been allowed to use pencils. The appointment ceremonies of new Maltese presidents and the award of the Order of Merit will take place in the room today.
Supreme Council Hall
The large Supreme Council Hall has two entrances from the Entrance Corridor and stretches from the vestibule to the end of the corridor. This former Chapter Hall served the Grand Council of the knighthood as a meeting room and was by the British in 1818 to mark the founding of the Order of St Michael and St George , whose members were nominated in the hall, Hall of St Michael and St Renamed George . Opposite the entrance, at the end of the hall, on a pedestal under the coat of arms of Malta, stands the former throne of the Grand Masters, which is why the hall is popularly known as the Throne Room .
The hall, which was badly damaged during the Second Great Siege of Malta in World War II but could be restored, is famous for a twelve-part series of friezes depicting the siege of 1565 and painted between 1576 and 1581 by Matteo Perez d'Aleccio ( * 1547; † 1616) was made. He was a student of Michelangelo and worked with him in the Sistine Chapel . He also decorated the coffered ceiling. The paintings are now considered by historians to be the most reliable chronicle of events recorded in the picture.
Above the entrance to the Supreme Council Hall is the gallery that the British removed from the Grand Council Chamber.
Other rooms
Other important rooms branch off from the two publicly accessible main corridors:
- A door from the vestibule leads into the State Dining Hall (German: "Staatsspeisesaal"), right after the staircase. The room has a finely crafted coffered ceiling, a fireplace, two chandeliers, two windows, a simple stucco ceiling and a centrally positioned oval wooden table. Side tables and chairs covered with gold leaf , as well as miniature knight armor, stand on the walls . Furthermore, the paintings of all former Maltese presidents and British governors in Malta as well as portraits of some British kings hang in the State Dining Hall.
- The Ambassador's Room has access from both the Supreme Council Hall and the Page's Waiting Room. It is also known colloquially as the Red Room after the red damask on the walls . In addition, the curtains, the carpet and the velvet on the golden furniture are also of this color. The room was used for audiences with the Grand Master and has eight frescoes, a frieze by Matteo Perez d'Aleccio showing scenes from the two centuries of the order's history before the arrival in Malta, and a painting by Antoine Favray depicting Philippe de Villiers de l ' Isle-Adam maps. You can see him accepting the keys to the island's capital, Mdina , after the archipelago was handed over to the order as a fief by Charles V in 1530 .
- The Page's Waiting Room (German: " Pagenwarteraum "), also called Paggeria , has an entrance from the Ambassador's Room and a corner of the prince of Wales' Corridor and Entrance Corridor. The walls are hung with yellow brocade fabric and damask, which gave the room the name Yellow Room . During the reign of the order it served as a waiting room for 16 pages who had to perform this service before they were enrolled in the order. They were registered by their mostly European parents before they were twelve years old. You could only become a knight of the order after reaching the age of 18. In Page's Waiting Room, a frieze by Matteo Perez d'Aleccio shows several events from the history of the order in the 13th century, i.e. the time before the conquest of Acon by the Saracens and the associated expulsion from the Holy Land . There are also four urban majolica vases and a portrait of Jean de la Valette by Favray .
- The Armory Corridor ends in the southeast at a few low, symbolic marble steps that lead to a magnificent portal, behind which the Chamber of Representatives (German: "Chamber of Deputies") (also known as the Chamber of Parliament ) of the Republic of Malta is located. It takes up the entire southeast side of the building and is not open to the public. In 1976, Parliament moved into these extremely simple rooms, which had served as an armory since 1604.
Palace Armory
The Palace Armory , the armory of the Grand Master's Palace, was originally located on the first floor in the rooms of today's Parliament from 1604. In 1860, the British colonial rulers declared it Malta's first public museum, and in 1976 it moved into two ground floor vaults that were formerly stables. The collection, which forms a separate museum section, contains over 5,700 exhibits from the 16th to 18th centuries, including arquebuses , halberds , prick forks, helmets, cannons, carriages and shields as well as a great deal of armor from knights of the order. These are so numerous because they reverted to the possession of the order after the death of a knight. The most famous examples are the armor of the Grand Masters Jean de la Valette and Alof de Wignacourt . Due to the multinational nature of the Order of St. John and its country team structure in so-called tongues , weapons from many countries can be seen in the vaults. In addition, the Palace Armory also houses Ottoman weapons that the knights took after fighting. Owned by the Palace Armory are also the sword of Turgutreis , one of the oldest launchers for a flintlock rifle , a sword with built revolver and a Gonne Shield : a round plate with a small chimney-shaped bulge big enough to shoot it.
During the years of armed conflict with the Ottomans, the knights kept an exact register of the holdings in the armory . In the years of declining military activity of the Order, these strict controls ceased and many items, mostly weapons, disappeared. Some reappeared in the 20th and 21st centuries in the Louvre in Paris or the Tower of London .
Visiting hours
The arsenal of the knights of the time can be viewed daily between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. At the entrance are audio guides provided which are included in the admission price. Available in six languages (Maltese, English, Spanish, Italian, German and French), they provide visitors with interesting information about the weapons and armaments of the respective epochs and their development.
literature
- Michael Galea: Malta: the Palace of the Grandmasters and the Armory . MJ Publications, Valletta 1988
- Michael Galea: Malta: the Palace of the Grandmasters and the Armory . Loizou Publications, 1990, ISBN 978-1-903799-11-6
- Joseph Ellul: The Grandmaster's Palace & the Gobelin Tapestries . Loizou Publications, 1996, ISBN 978-1-903799-10-9
- Albert Ganado: Palace of the Grand Masters in Valletta . 2001, Fondazzjoni Patrimonju Malti, ISBN 978-99932-10-12-2
- Aldo E. Azzopardi: Malta and its islands . Centro Stampa Editoriale, Sesto Fiorentino ; Pp. 29-35
Web links
- Palazz tal-Granmastru / Grandmaster Palace. (PDF) In: National Inventory of the Cultural Property of the Maltese Islands. Sovrintendenza tal-Patrimonju Kulturale, December 28, 2012, accessed on November 4, 2019 .
Individual evidence
- ^ Azzopardi, p. 32
- ↑ http://www.locationmalta.com/attractions/grandmaster.html ( Memento from October 4, 2010 in the Internet Archive )
- ^ Azzopardi, p. 29
- ↑ Ellul (1996), p. 17
- ^ Azzopardi, p. 30
- ↑ Galea (1988), p. 21
- ^ Heritage Malta: The Palace Armory
Coordinates: 35 ° 53 ′ 55 ″ N , 14 ° 30 ′ 51 ″ E
