Gozo Curia objects to flats next to Victoria chapel

The Gozo Bishop’s curia is objecting to a zoning application to remove a schemed road planned in the local plan, which has so far prevented the erection of a block of flats next to St Martha’s chapel in Victoria, which dates back to the cholera epidemic in the latter half of the 19th century.

In a formal objection, the Curia pointed out that the retention of this schemed road would ensure protection for the chapel which it said it deserves “as a result of its isolation and insulation from having developments built right next to it”.

It warned that the elimination of the road could potentially result in a block of apartments and commercial units being built adjacent to the chapel.

According to the local plan, land owned by the diocese of Gozo situated on the north and east of the chapel is to be developed into a garden. “Therefore it would not make any sense to allow the possibility of massive development on the other side of the chapel, thus leading to a blank party wall overlooking the chapel,” the Curai said.

Plans submitted in the application to remove the schemed road already indicate a height of 12.3m (3 floors) for residential development on the site owned by the applicant just next to the chapel.   

The schemed road, which would run parallel to similar roads linking Triq Gorg Borg Oliver and Triq Guzeppi Labre, occupies 341 sq.m in the immediate vicinity of the chapel, and this precludes development on a substantial part of the 1,162sq.m plot owned by the owner. The local plan allows residential development on the rest of the plot.

St Martha’s Chapel was built in Tal-Għonq, Victoria, in 1866 by the merchant Felice Attard and his wife Rosina as an ex-voto for their deliverance from cholera.

The chapel stands in front of the Tal-Infetti cemetery where people who died from cholera were buried. In 1868, a statue of Our Lady of Graces was raised on a plinth to the left of the chapel but this was later moved to the nearby Conservatory of St. Peter and St. Paul. The plinth, with a bas-relief of the souls in purgatory, still stands in its original position.