Din l-Art Ħelwa files appeal against Excelsior Hotel expansion

Din l-Art Ħelwa has filed an appeal against the Planning Authority's approval of a major extension to the Grand Hotel Excelsior. The six-storey wing will add 77 guest rooms and remove over 1,200 square metres of open space beneath Malta's key historic fortifications.

"There is a profound historical irony here," said Patrick Calleja, Executive President of Din l-Art Ħelwa. "Din l-Art Ħelwa was founded more than sixty years ago out of public outrage at the desecration of these very bastions by the original Excelsior development. More than sixty years later, we now find ourselves once again defending them, this time against a further extension of the same hotel. That tells us, sadly, how little has changed and how little has been learned."

This comes after the Planning Authority approved a 77-room lateral extension to the Grand Hotel Excelsior in Floriana.

The original Excelsior hotel left what Din l-Art Ħelwa describes as a visible scar on the historic bastions. This latest approval, the group argues, allows the hotel to expand further into the bastions' setting, adding more bulk and development into one of Malta's most sensitive historic landscapes.

The fortifications in question form part of Malta's recent bid for United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation World Heritage status. 

Din l-Art Ħelwa argues that this recognition carries an obligation to protect, not diminish, the outstanding universal value of these structures.

The group also rejects what it calls the outdated notion that tourism success is measured only by rising bed numbers. "Malta cannot credibly pursue a quality tourism model while simultaneously permitting developments that erode the very historic and visual assets upon which that tourism depends," Din l-Art Ħelwa said. "Our bastions are not a backdrop for development. They are the heritage that development must respect."

He said that together with other NGOs, activists and citizens who refuse to remain silent, Din l-Art Ħelwa will continue to fulfil the role for which it was created: to stand guard over these islands and defend the heritage that belongs not only to us, but to generations yet to come