The Manderaggio
The
ManderaggioOrigin and development of Valletta’s Mandraggio
by denis Darmanin
On March 14, 1566, just six months after the lifting of the Great Siege of 1565, the Order of St John set out to build a new fortified city as its seat in Malta, on the Xiberras peninsula between the Porto Grande and Porto Marsamuxetto.
Grand Master Jean Parisot de Valette laid the first stone of the city on the 28th of the same month, but unfortunately died before he could see the city taking shape. The task was placed in the hands of the Order’s leading military engineer, Francesco Laparelli, who was the personal architect of Pope Pius V. Pope Pius was a great benefactor towards the building of the city.
The new city was meant to be the first of a series of fortified areas to guard the entrances to the two harbours. Haste was the prime factor and the Order wanted to have the main trace of fortifications ready due to the imminent threat of another attack by the Ottoman forces. Although not the original idea, the city ended being built on Bernard Palissy’s grid-iron pattern, where the streets started just beyond the enceinte, or land front fortifications, and travelled parallel down to Fort St Elmo. Twelve other streets crossed them from the Grand Harbour side to Marsamxett.
The site soon took the name of Mandracchio, or Manderaggio, which was then twisted into Mandraġġ by the locals. Mandraki was the name given to the galleys’ shelter that the Order had built in Rhodes, the island which they had occupied since 1309 but was lost to the Saracens in 1521. The harbour in Rhodes is still called Mandraki. The Mandraġġ concept was not a new idea, as when the Order had occupied Vittoriosa, the watery channel between Castello Sant’ Angelo and the Borgo was used for this purpose. There are other versions of how the name Mandraġġ may have originated but being intended to be a camber similar to that the Order had in Rhodes, is an acceptable justification.
Many contemporary plans of the Mandraġġ exist, the oldest of which was Disegno della nuova città di Malta, published in Rome by Antonio Lafrerj, La nuova citæ fortezza di Malta chiamata Valletta, by Matteo Perez d’Aleccio published in Rome in 1582, Valletae civitas monte repleta, attributed to Philippe Thomassin, published in Rome in 1586, another by Pierre Mortier published in Amsterdam, Holland, around 1663 and alletta die new stat Malta by Daniel Specklin published in 1585, which apart from the Mandraġġ, also includes the arsenale in the area today known as is-Sur tal-Franċiżi or id-Due Balli.
The quarrying of stone from the Mandraġġ reached an inferior quality and and harder to quarry and subsequently, the Order’s engineers realised that the area was too small to accommodate the entire fleet, especially the battle squadron, and that the location was subject to the strong winds and currents created by the maestrale. Furthermore, the new city was now safeguarding the entrance to the Grand Harbour, which as a natural harbour was endowed with numerous sheltered creeks and inlets. Excavation work was halted and the idea of a Mandracchio was scrapped, while the plan by Lapparelli for an arsenale near St Elmo suffered the same fate.
Between 1575 and 1600, in the quarry intended to become the Mandracchio, shacks and rooms were erected without any conformity to the grid-iron plan of Valletta. Most were inhabited by workers who came to Valletta during its building boom and later to seek their fortune in the new city. Many ended as destitute and either scraped a living doing any menial work or turned to crime, which was common among the poor in European cities of the time. The houses that flourished in the Manderaggio continued to increase, giving the area a totally different ambience from the rest of the city; its streets were a labyrinth of narrow and dark alleys. Poverty and all that goes with it prevailed. Even height discrepancy existed as the houses close to the fortifications were as high as eight floors, while those to the rear were only of two floors high. Although the houses that flanked the four streets that bordered the Manderaggio were all aligned with the grid pattern, houses built behind them were built at random in a maze of alleys.
The principal entrance to the Manderaggio was from the stairs located at the lower part of St. John Street, one of the two secondary entrances or narrow stairways was in St Mark Street and was known as il-Mina taċ-Ċintura (the arch of Our Lady of Consolation), and the other in St Lucia Street known as It-tomba tal-Mandraġġ (the ‘grave’). Most areas within the Manderaggio had names, such as Ir-Rokna (the ‘corner’), iż-Żenqa (the ‘narrow steps’), il-Kwartier (the ‘quarters’), il-Gandott (the ‘ditch’) and id-Dranaġġ (the ‘sewer’). The Manderaggio had two main alleyways, Strada Manderaggio and Strada San Giorgio, the latter was likely an unofficial name. The wide part of the Mandraġġ was known as Il-Kortil, as it resembled a large courtyard.
Early in the 20th century the Manderaggio was reputed to have over 300 numbered doors, some being a kerreja (rockery), or sub-divided tenement houses. The house of the famous artist Mattia Preti was in St Patrick Street. A system of water supply in these dwellings was unheard of, and most fetched water from one of the two elaborate fountain troughs or from pumps in its precincts, all being branches of the water system introduced in Valletta by Grand Master Alofius de Wignacourt in 1615. They were also the meeting place for the women who went there either to fetch water for cooking or washing, or to bathe their children. Others would carry large zinc tubs with their daily washing or just to chat friends or neighbours. Nevertheless, hygiene in the Manderaggio was still lacked behind the rest of the city. a drainage system in Valletta. It is very doubtful whether the system ever reached the Manderaggio as there were cesspits along most alleys which had with a wooden cover into which was dumped all natural wastes, while a number of grilles served to conduct all water, rain or otherwise, into the sea.
The Manderaggio was renowned for its devotion towards Our Lady of Mount Carmel, better known as the Madonna tal-Karmnu and names such as Karmena, Mananni, Karmnu and Marija, even in their English versions, were very common up to the 1960s At a time when social services, good sanitation and sound employment were very lacking, the only other refuge was the Church and divine providence. Although the inhabitants of the Manderaggio were constrained to live in such squalor, they weren’t of such bad stock as one would imagine. They were rather a reserved type, hard-headed and unlikely to want to mix with others beyond their borders, possibly due to the stigma associated with their poor living standards. Most of those who lived in the Manderaggio were somehow related to each other and four or five surnames were predominant. For obvious reasons, people from other districts of Valletta, and even more outsiders, did not venture into the Manderaggio, other than priests, the police, sanitary inspectors and very few others.
The passage hardly effected the Manderaggio. As many as four people lived in one room and one wonders how the poor mothers managed to keep their children happy, properly dressed and fed when most fathers had to struggle for a living. Living by the sea, many were hard-working men and became excellent boatmen and fishermen at an early age, and the latter could bring some freshly caught fish for the family to eat or barter. Many were employed on the Order’s galleys or other craft, at the Order’s bakery became excellent bakers. But others just gave up and fell foul to drink and vices with bad consequences on their wives and children, a situation common in every town and village throughout the island. With the arrival of the British, others enlisted as sailors with the navy of the new sovereign.
Today, the section of Valletta on the Marsamxett Harbour side near the Manderaggio was named the Marsamxetto Ferry Landing, which knows its origin to the steam ferry service was introduced over a century ago. Therefore, this part of Valletta’s foreshore became synonymous with the Manderaggio and became its ‘seaside territory’.
Either because they had large families to feed or because they possessed some talent and wished to use it to make a better life, others from the area excelled in playing musical instruments and made a name for themselves. Valletta had grog shops by the dozen, especially in Strait Street or ‘the Gut’, as it was known with the men in uniform.
Many men either ran these shops or worked as barmen, waiters, checkers-out, dishwashers, errand boys and any other work involved with the trade. Others did part-time jobs entertaining ‘Tommy’ or ‘Jack’ in one of these bars, from which they could earn some extra money. British sailors were known to get quite drunk, and trouble always followed, and the Maltese were united and hard fighters. Others would dare to risk ‘clearing’ any loose change left on any tables or from the pockets of any sailor unconscious on the floor. Such was the Mandragg and the life who lived there until 1948, when it was demolished and rebuilt into spacious workers dwellings with all commodities,