Notre Dame Gate - Cottonera Lines

by Stephen C. Spiteri & Mario Farrugia

When one looks at the Zabbar gate today, isolated as it is from its adjoining ramparts and bastions and obscured by modern buildings and trees, one cannot help but notice that this conspicuously large building, looking more like a palace, or even triumphal arch or a church, has very little  ‘military’ look about it.  Surely the maxim ‘build low and in depth’, applied to the bastioned system of fortification in the 17^th and 18^th centuries, was never intended to be applied here.  Why then, did the military engineers of the time feel the need to erect such an artistic edifice along the main line of defence, an obvious and vulnerable target in open site of enemy batteries should the place ever have come under siege?

The answer lies mainly in the fact that art, too, in the age of Baroque, had a role to play in the profession of war.  Bold artistic expression was considered a clear display of power, an attempt to awe the enemy with a celebration of the Order’s aristocracy and military might.  Zabbar Gate, named after the patron Saint of Zabbar, Notré Dame de la Graće,  (known also as Cottoner gate and Bieb is-Sultan) is undoubtedly the grandest of such fortified gateways in the Maltese islands, its grandiosity lying not only in its massiveness and overall design but also in its applied decorative style, a huge trophy of arms.

It is also the most impressive of the seven gateways that pierce the massive Cottonera enceinte, the Order’s most ambitious work of fortification designed to protect the Grand Harbour and the three cities from a landward attack.

Built as a result of the fall of Candia to the Turks in 1670, which rekindled the fear of a Turkish invasion, these works consisted of a large semi-circular trace of eight hollow bastions linked by curtain walls, the whole enceinte designed ‘all 'Olandese’. The vast trace of walls was designed to envelope the Sta Margherita and San Salvatore heights within a defensive perimeter in order to the deny these commanding heights to an invading enemy force armed with siege artillery. The new enceinte linked together the extremities of the old fronts of Vittoriosa and Senglea.

Named after Grand Master Nicholas Cotoner, who commissioned the construction of the new trace of walls, these ramparts were designed by the Italian military engineer Antonio Maurizio Valperga as part of an ambitious overall scheme intended to settle once and for all the question of the harbour's security.

Work on the Cottonera Lines began in August 1670 and continued incessantly for a decade until the death of the Grand Master in 1680, by which time the main body of the enceinte had already been laid down under the supervision of Mederico Blondel the order's resident engineer. By then, too, the funds allocated for the Cottonera fortifications had run out and the new Grand Master ordered the cessation of the project. As a result the projected ravelins and cavaliers, together with the ditch and the covertway, which originally featured in Valperga's scheme, were never constructed. The project then remained virtually abandoned until well into the l8th century when some effort was made to bring the works to completion. In 1724 a retrenchment was cut in one of the bastions of the Cottonera Lines, the San Salvatore bastion, and this was converted into a fort.

This was basically the last major refinement to the design during the Hospitaller period until, in the mid-19^th century, the British military attempted to strengthen the vast enceinte with the construction of an internal retrenchment, known as St. Clement's Retrenchment. But by the middle of that century, due to the rapid improvements witnessed in the field of artillery, these defensive lines became superfluous to the military requirements of the island and were gradually abandoned.

Architectural design

The architecture of Notre Dame gate, although conditioned by the necessities of monumental expression, was fundamentally a functional one.  As a fortification gate its  main role was to provide a controlled entrance / exit passage into the fortifications. This was achieved by means of a drawbridge and guard rooms located at ground level.  Given that the road passing through the gateway communicated directly with the town of Zabbar, the gate was built to absorb a considerable amount of traffic. As such, it was designed with three openings, a large central main passage, and two adjoining side doors.  Consequently, the ground storey is divided into three bays, each with a door in it, the central bay having a larger opening than the side ones. A similar solution was adopted for St Paul Gate, demolished in the 19^th century, but once situated  on the other side of the enceinte and opening onto Ghajn Dwieli. The main passage at Notre Dame gate was also defended further by a portcullis, or ‘saracinesca’, now no longer existing.

The corresponding façade itself is rather simple and geometric in design, lacking elaborate Baroque elements, the main features being pairs of plain pilasters with Ionic capitals and aedicules, surmounted by a cornice and balustrade.  The balustrade marks the division between the ground and middle level. The second storey is less wide than the one supporting it, and it is also less deep so that a balcony is formed in front of it, an arrangement which gives the building the appearance of a miniature palace rather than that of a gate. Indeed, it this is feature, that is, its volume – with rooms at the back of the gate -  which sets  the gate apart  from the other gateways built by the Knights in Malta.

Notre Dame Gate is documented as having been built in 1675, a date inscribed high on its façade. The full inscription reads as follows:

DOM EM. PRINCIPI F. NICOLAO COTONER M. MAG.

AMPLISSIMIS OPERIBVS ANIMO MAJOR CVIVS IMPERVS AVSPICVS COTONNERIA VRBE VRBI VALLETTAE A.DDITA

VNV CHRIST NOMONI PROPVGNAC COFECIT ET INSVLAE TVTVM RECESSVM

ET POTVI TVTVM RECEPTVM DEDIT. ANNO DNI MDCLXXV

VINCET DVRANDO SACVLA SIMVLACRV IN PORTA NOMEN IN VRBE IN OASE FAMA

The inscription speaks about the Grand Master who built it and the date of construction. At the time Mederico Blondel was resident engineer, but even so, he has never been suggested as its possible designer, but only its executor. Denis De Lucca and Joe Tonna attribute the design of this gate to Romano Fortunato Carapecchia, an Italian  architect and water supply engineer in the employ of the Order between 1706 and 1738. Leonard Mahoney, on the other hand argued that Grand Master Cottoner commissioned the Papal architect Carlo Fontana to design it.’

It seems more probable that the assumptions by De Lucca and Tonna are nearer the mark. These are largely based on the existence of a drawing attributed to Carapecchia,  now held at the Courtauld Institute in London, which shows the front elevation of a structure looking very similar to Notre Dame.  Apart from this, however, there is hardly any other documentary evidence to throw light on the matter.  Although the authorship of  this gateway is still a debatable topic, it seems likely that Romano Carapecchia was largely responsible for redesigning an existing gateway, giving it a large superstructure as a backdrop for the triumphal bust of Grand Master Cotoner.

Use and decline

Little is known about the use of the gate throughout the late 17^th and 18^th centuries, although what little documentary evidence has been unearthed to date shows that it was left largely unattended for most of the time, except, of course in emergencies. It was important enough, however, to be retained, when most of the other gateways were eventually sealed of with masonry.  Of the all the Cottonera gateways, namely San Salvatore, St. Louis, St. James, St. John the Almoner and St. Pauls’, the ones retained in use were largely San Salvatore and Ghajn Dwieli.   These two were designated from the start to serve as the main entrances into the newly fortified urban complex for the north-east and south-east provinces respectively.  Even then, given that the projected ravelins were never constructed, these gates could only communicate through their sally-ports.

It was only Notre Dame gate which was given an outerwork. This seems to have been designed by French engineers under Tigné in 1715 and was given the form of a massive solid tenaille, built high enough to shield the entrance into the gate. The tenaille was still standing for most of the early part of the 20^th century but was unfortunately cleared away to accommodate modern traffic.

Still, throughout the 18^th century, Notre Dame gate seems to have lacked a permanent ‘corpo di guardia’ for it was the duty of the guards assigned to the nearby polverista to open and close doors of the gate at the established hours.  A more active period must have been during the blockade of the French, when the gate, given its commanding position and elevation, must have served as an important lookout post by the French garrison, particularly during the ill-fated French counterattack on the village of Zabbar.  Given the prominence of Notre Dame gate, however, it was necessary for the French troops to sally out from a nearby gateway in order not to be seen by the insurgents. 

Bridges and portcullis

Very much like all the gateways of the period, Notre Dame gate was originally designed to be equipped with a bascule type of bridge and a massive portcullis at its back. This bridge was long enough to span the ditch that ran the full length of the lines. Yet it is not clear if this was ever fitted. During the early British period the gate was served by a chain and tackle drawbridge. The accommodation of the new type of bridge involved some structural modifications to the  main gateway for this was narrowed while the vertical recesses designed to house the baulks, or long arms of the bascule, were partly blocked up. The portcullis suffered the same faith and today only the space in the ceiling where it originally stood remains.

Historic graffiti

This gate is very rich in terms of period graffiti carved on its walls. There are more than a hundred of these, especially around the gatehouse. Some represent sailing ships and other maritime craft. Others simply dates, names, and naïve drawings of religious subjects, but by far the most informative and artistically impressive are those carved by soldiers, probably during their long and lonely hours on guard.  These document a period that covers the French blockade up to about the First World War. Apart from recording the presence of these men and their respective units for posterity, the graffitti add an important tangible human dimension to the massive monumental architecture  of this gate.

Notre Dame Gate is currently being restored by Fondazzjoni Wirt Artna to serve both as the headquarters of this organization and as a museum.