Valletta: vertical lift planned for Marsamxett ferry landing

A pedestrian lift is to link the Marsamxett ferry landing to Valletta’s Peacock Garden.

The plans by the Grand Harbour Regeneration Committee were part of a Labour manifesto pledge, to incentivise the use of the ferry as an alternative to car transport.

The lift will be nestled inside the San Salvatore Bastion in a way in which only the access cabin will be visible from long distance views.

Works will however entail excavation through the bedrock underlying the bastion. The Superintendence for Cultural Heritage acknowledged that the lift would impact on the fortification wall and the Second World War public air-raid shelter complex inside it.

But it accepted that there was a strategic need to provide vertical access from Triq il-Lanca, to Triq Marsamxett. It said the proposal was “the best possible solution in terms of achieving a balance between reducing the visual impact and the minimum intervention possible within the bastions.”

Long discussions involving the Superintendence as well as the PA’s cultural heritage advisory committee and UNESCO’s World Heritage Site technical committee took place ahead of the plans.

While saying the proposal was acceptable in principle, the Superintendence has yet to issue its final clearance, and requested revised drawings that could mitigate or reduce the visibility or massing of the lift cabin structure.