You know when you go through the paper and there on the back page, or in the middle section, is this lovely photo of a great event that took place last Sunday; a strawberry festival say, or a firework show. The caption tells you that the event was a huge success; the sun was shining and the crowds were out in full, and you say to yourself, “Darn it, why didn’t I know about that before?  I would have have gone to that”. Well, my new year’s resolution is to find out about these things before they happen, so that I have at least some chance of getting to go along.

Which brings me to this; last week I see in big letters in the Times of Malta; Mdina Restoration Works Open Day. The Ministry for Resources and Rural Affairs invites the public to an OPEN DAY at Mdina in order to be able to see and experience at first hand the restoration works currently in progress. “Sounds nerdy” I think; “Let’s go”.

I thought I would be the only one there; far from it, I joined a host of other enthusiastic nerds who wanted to see what was going on. First, our guide led us to the playground just outside Mdina so we could see for ourselves the work being carried out on the walls below the Vilhena Palace. Apparently, every single stone is being meticulously logged, diagnosed and treated individually with fungicide, lime injection or whatever it needs. Some stones were so badly damaged, they have been replaced altogether.

Then our happy group is taken through a little door just past the gates of Mdina to the Office of the Restoration Unit. Up on St Paul’s Bastion, we are told that a large part of Mdina was built on soft ground rather than rock and was found to be moving slowly but surely downwards and outwards. To anchor the huge mass of stones from Vilhena and past the Xara Palace, huge ‘piles’ (steel mesh columns to you and I) of steel have been buried deep underground to a depth of 17m and then filled with concrete. More piles have been drilled horizontally to anchor the bastions in place. In order to consolidate the whole area, a large area underneath the bastion has been filled with concrete so that the entire structure, which is now almost entirely held together with steel rods, has something solid to rest on.

In some areas, drilling from underneath the structure would have damaged some of the buildings above, so the drilling had to begin on top of the bastion walls, and the piles now reach all the way from the top of the walls to deep under the ground.

Similar work is also being carried out in Valletta, Birgu and in the Cittadella in Gozo. It’s a huge undertaking, not just in terms of the amount of cement and steel used, but also in the sense of the enormity of the task; saving the these historic sites from eventual collapse.

The tour itself is a pleasure; it’s lovely to be brought around by such amiable, professional and knowledgeable people; it’s a breath of fresh air amid all the diesel spewing and fridge dumping and bird hunting on this tiny island of ours.