Excelsior set to expand with 77-room wing extension

The Planning Authority has approved a 77-room lateral extension to the Grand Hotel Excelsior in Floriana.

The new wing will sit below road level and primarily screen an existing retaining wall, increasing the hotel's bulk when viewed from across the harbour.

Two board members voted against the proposal. NGO representative Romano Cassar insisted that the Excelsior Hotel, which breached the fortifications, should not be there in the first place, and justified his vote against the extension on the grounds that it would worsen its impact.

Board member Herman Bonnici, an architect and academic appointed to the board following the election, expressed concern about the increased visual clutter in this sensitive area.

The approval was preceded by a Heritage Impact Assessment, which concluded that the extension would have "an acceptable level of impact" on Valletta's World Heritage status and the Outstanding Universal Value (OUV) of Valletta and its Harbour Fortifications.

However, the same report also concluded that the extension would have moderate adverse visual impacts, particularly from key viewpoints across Marsamxett Harbour, including Msida and Ta' Xbiex.

The report's conclusions were endorsed by the Superintendence for Cultural Heritage, UNESCO's World Heritage Centre and ICOMOS.

But Friends of Villa Frere and Din l-Art Ħelwa warned that the extension would increase the bulk of the original Excelsior development, which architect Edward Said described as "one of Malta's worst architectural blunders" and one that should never have been approved in the first place.

Said reminded the board that the Excelsior, as built in the 1960s, "mutilated a pristine line of coastal Hospitaller fortifications stretching over two kilometres", with the proposed extension further compounding the original mistake.

Patrick Calleja from Din l-Art Ħelwa called on the board to postpone the hearing on the Grand Hotel Excelsior's expansion, arguing that the decision should be delayed until the evaluation of Malta's bid to expand the Valletta UNESCO World Heritage Site boundaries is concluded.

While the revised scheme avoids direct encroachment on the Floriana bastions, it continues to enlarge a hotel that has long been regarded as one of the most controversial interventions on Valletta's waterfront.

The original Excelsior Hotel, built in the 1960s following a breach in the Floriana fortifications, became a catalyst for Malta's early conservation movement. Its construction helped spur the founding of Din l-Art Ħelwa, which campaigned against the loss of the historic fortification line along the harbour.

Although the original structure was later demolished, the breach remained and was subsequently redeveloped into the present Grand Hotel Excelsior, which opened in 2007.