As you meander down Republic Street in Valletta, you would be forgiven for walking past yet another beautiful building with an imposing door and striking architecture – but you may want to stop for a moment.

Here, at number 219, Palazzo de le Salle makes for the ideal place to pause, wander in, and explore this beautiful building – which is open to the public.

As the home of the Malta Society of Arts, Palazzo de la Salle is actually a busy cultural venue – with classes (the life drawing course is particularly popular!), concerts and a gorgeous gallery that continually features fantastic work by local and international artists.

However, more off limits is its historic chapel, which has been undergoing conservation work over the past couple of years. I decided to find out more.

“This chapel was actually one of the earliest private chapels in Malta,” explains Adrian Mamo, the president of the Malta Society of Arts. “The Palace dates back to the building of Valletta in the second half of the 16th century. It has quite a history! In the 18th century, for instance, it was occupied by Henri and Guillieume de La Salle, two brothers who hailed from an illustrious noble family and who jointly acted as the bailiffs (or ‘bali’) in this part of the City; hence the locality is known as the 'Due Balli’.

“The chapel has a top three-foot frieze with depictions of St John the Baptist, as well as the coats of arms of Grandmaster Manoel de Vilhena and the de La Salle family, which date to the 1730s. There’s no doubt about it: they are completely unique and absolutely priceless”

The project to conserve these wall paintings began in 2016, and has been spearheaded by the University of Malta’s Department of Conservation and Built Heritage team, which is composed of professional conservators and students, as a core component of the MSc in the Conservation of Decorative Architectural Surfaces.

The Department is currently crowdfunding to complete the project. “The final phase will include the cleaning and retouching of the paintings, and is a crucial stage in our work since it will return full legibility and aesthetic value to the paintings,” explains conservator Chiara Pasian. “This will require six months of full-time work of two recent professional graduates, under the continuing guidance of the professional departmental staff.”

But despite the amount of work, it will be worth it – as these beautiful Baroque paintings are highly significant historical and artistic evidence of the era of the Knights, and some of the few Baroque wall paintings in Malta that survive within a domestic context.

“Extraordinarily, they actually survive in their original form, never having been restored or overpainted in the past decades,” Chiara continues. “The Chapel of Palazzo De la Salle is a precious, hidden gem in the Maltese Islands. It is part of shared cultural heritage which belongs to all of us and which deserves to be brought back to life.”

And the really good news? Once the conservation project is complete, it will be opened to the public for you to enjoy too. While we don’t have a date for that just yet – watch this space! We’ll let you know as soon as we do.