Building the frontier: ARCHITECTURE IN MALTA BETWEEN THE XVITH AND THE XVIITH CENTURY

Abstract

The architecture of the modern age in Malta is the product of a frontier community, constantly animated by an uninterrupted flow of technicians, clerics and diplomats. From the last gothic season to the onset of the baroque age, the Maltese building site was nourished by distinctly heterogeneous stimuli and references, reaching a cultural horizon of European scope. Between centuries XVI and XVII, the Maltese archipelago thus hosted a surprisingly-experimental laboratory of contamination of languages and technologies, which find their maximum expression in the stereotomy construction.