City Gate, Valletta

Stand still for a moment on the bridge. Under your feet the stone is pale and warm, the colour of honey left in the sun. Look over the railing and the ground drops away into a deep, dry ditch cut straight into the rock. Ahead of you, two tall walls of stone rise on either side of a narrow opening. Through that gap, the whole city waits. This is City Gate, the front door of Valletta.

Every visitor who arrives here by bus or on foot passes through this spot. It is the main way into the city, and it has been for more than four centuries. But the gate you see today is very new. It is the latest in a line of gates that have stood on this same threshold. Each one tells you something about who ruled Malta, and how they wanted the city to look to the people walking in.

To understand why the gate is here at all, we have to go back to 1565. That year, the Ottoman Empire laid siege to Malta. The island was held by the Knights of Saint John, a religious and military order of European nobles. The Great Siege lasted for months, and the Knights held on. After that narrow escape, they decided to build a new, fortified capital on this rocky peninsula. Work began in 1566, and the city took its name from the Grand Master who led the defence, Jean de Valette.

Valletta was planned as a fortress first and a city second. Thick bastions wrapped the land side of the peninsula. The ditch below you was carved out of the bedrock, and much of the stone that came out of it went into the buildings of the city. So the ditch and the city are, in a sense, made from the same rock. The first gate here was a defensive opening in those walls, guarded and controlled. Getting in meant crossing the ditch by bridge and passing the guards.

Over the centuries, the gate was rebuilt again and again. The Knights replaced their first gate with a grander one. Later, under British rule in the nineteenth century, it was rebuilt once more in a more ceremonial style. Then in the 1960s, a modernist gate went up, flanked by wide, plain blocks. Many Maltese never warmed to it. It was taken down in the early 2010s to make way for the version you are looking at now.

The present gate was designed by the Italian architect Renzo Piano, the same architect behind the Pompidou Centre in Paris and the Shard in London. It was completed in 2014. Here is the surprise. Piano did not try to build a monument. Instead, he made the gate into a gap. The opening is cut straight through the bastion, and two slender stone blades frame it. His idea was to bring back the feeling of the original breach in the walls — a simple cut, open to the sky.

Look closely at those two blades. They are faced in Maltese limestone, the same family of stone used across the old city. From certain angles, they seem to lean slightly away from the opening, so the sky widens as you walk through. Behind each blade, stairs climb up toward the ramparts. Many visitors walk straight down the middle and never notice those stairs. Climb them, and you get a view along the top of the walls and back over the ditch.

The gate was only one part of a larger project. Just inside, on your right as you enter, stands the Parliament House of Malta, also by Piano. It is built of the same pale stone, but the facade is cut by machine into a deep, repeated pattern. As the sun moves, those cuts fill with shadow and light. The building also stands on slender supports, so it seems to float a little above the ground. Some people love it. Some people still argue about it. That debate is part of its story.

A few steps further on, you reach the shell of the old Royal Opera House. It opened in the 1860s and was one of the grandest buildings in the city. In 1942, during the Second World War, it was destroyed by bombing. Malta suffered very heavy air raids in those years, and the island as a whole was awarded the George Cross for its endurance. For decades, the ruins stood empty. Today, Piano's project has turned them into an open-air performance space, with the broken columns still standing around the stage.

Now turn and face down the long, straight street ahead of you. This is Republic Street, the main spine of Valletta. It runs almost the full length of the peninsula, toward Fort Saint Elmo at the far tip. The Knights laid out the city on a grid, which was unusual for its time. Stand in the gate and you can feel that order. The street pulls your eye forward, between balconies and shop signs, toward the sea you cannot yet see.

Listen to the sound of this place. Behind you, outside the walls, buses arrive and depart, and traffic circles the large fountain in the square. Ahead of you, the noise softens. Footsteps take over. Voices echo off the stone. The gate works like a filter between the modern island and the old walled city. It is a short walk, perhaps a few dozen paces, but the change in sound and pace is clear.

The whole of Valletta was listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1980. That meant any new design here faced hard questions. How do you build something new at the front door of a protected Renaissance city? Piano's answer was to use local stone, keep the lines simple, and leave the sky open above the opening. Whether you find it beautiful or cold, it is a deliberate choice, and worth thinking about as you pass through.

Before you move on, pause in the middle of the opening. Look up at the strip of sky between the two blades. Look down at the stone under your feet, worn smooth by thousands of people every day. Behind you is the ditch the Knights cut from the rock. Ahead of you is the city they built from it. As you walk into Valletta, notice how the street narrows the light, and how the honey-coloured stone follows you all the way down.