Palazzino Valletta

Listed for the first time in forty years, Palazzino Valletta was not so much designed as patiently recovered. The restoration began without a master plan — each room was assessed on its own terms, its original proportions and finishes uncovered beneath layers of later intervention. The project grew outward from individual spaces, each one informing the next.

Positioned off Merchants Street in one of Valletta's tightest urban blocks, the townhouse occupies a narrow, deep plot typical of the city's 18th-century residential fabric. Its facade is shielded from the worst of the sun by the adjacent buildings, and the street itself remains shaded for most of the day. The relationship to the city is immediate — the building has no garden, no setback, no transition. The front door opens directly onto the pavement.

The central contrast runs between exterior and interior: the globigerina limestone facade and original timber balconies are preserved in full, while the plan behind them was reconfigured to suit contemporary domestic life. The building presents one face to the street and another to its inhabitants.

Original balconies in seasoned mahogany were cleaned and re-fixed to their stone corbels. Interior walls were stripped of render to expose the limestone beneath, then sealed with a breathable lime wash. The three rooms that have defined the building's plan since the 18th century were retained; a fourth was carved from what had been a service stair, creating a continuous flow between the entrance and the courtyard at the rear.

Measured in its recovery, honest in its materiality, Palazzino Valletta returns a building to the life it always had.