Drawings and descriptions : Villa Belvedere in Balluta

Abstract

In the first decades of the British presence in Malta, Thomas MacGill’s guidebook of 1839 described St Julian’s as a place where ‘several English families have villas’. This article describes the house and grounds of ‘Belvedere’ at St Julian’s, overlooking Balluta bay. Like the scheduled Villa Frere in Pietà and Villa Aspinall in Tarxien, ‘Belvedere’ is a valuable example of Malta’s cultural heritage of the early nineteenth century. Despite its dilapidated state today, its main original structure still survives, reflecting the lifestyle and aspirations of the British mercantile community in Malta in that period.