Nostalgias of Gozo

This volume is the successor to his 2006 volume Nostalgias of Malta and so the second of a projected series of photographic albums illustrative of the Maltese Islands. In his introduction to this fascinating album of photographs of Gozo dating to the late 19th century and early decades of the 20th century, Bonello laments the destruction of several outstanding Gozitan monuments like the Brocktorff or Xagħra Circle, the Garzes and Gourgion Towers, the medieval cemetery in St Augustine Sqaure, Victoria, or the maiming of the Citadel’s walls. This volume records a Gozo that was so much more rural than that of today and some of the man-made heritage now destroyed or ruined for ever.

The breath-taking frontispiece, showing an image taken around 1900 of Mgarr with its few clusters of buildings, the then newly built neo-Gothic chapel on the hill and the dominant shape of Fort Chambray, is a fitting curtain-raiser. Most of the photographs are taken from the commercial postcards produced by people like Michele Farrugia, a Gozitan photographer. These postcards were printed laboriously one at a time from the photographer’s negatives.

Most of the notable natural and man-made sights are covered by the album, some with multiplte pictures. Admireres of the Ta’ Pinu Basilica will, be delighted to see this fine building at different stages of its construction, including one from 1925 showing it still without its bell-tower. Popular places like Xlendi and Marsalforn are well illustrated, and so is Rabat with its citadel. For the folklorist and anthropologist, the many photographs showing festivities of all sorts, and people working at their craft should be very valuable.

Pawlu Mizzi’s admiring but perceptive essay on Michele Farrugia, included by Bonello in this volume, is a fitting tribute to the man many of whose photographs make up the present volume, beautifully designed like its predecessor.