Hundreds of small murals adorn the Main Guard building, which is currently undergoing conservation and restoration
“For some must watch, while others sleep, so runs the world away.”
Some soldier, on some long-forgotten day, wrote this line – quoted (not quite accurately) from William Shakespeare’s Hamlet – under a sizeable painting on one of the walls of the Main Guard, in Valletta. It is unlikely that we will ever know who he was but with that verse he undoubtedly summed up the essence of the watchful function of a building that has a thousand stories to tell through the paintings he and his colleagues left behind on those walls.
Murals at the Main Guard
I am delighted that the Main Guard is being restored. Between 1931 and 1972 it served as the Officers’ Mess of the 1st Bn The King’s Own Malta Regiment.
May I add some observations to the otherwise very good article by Daniela Attard Bezzina (December 14). The last mural was indeed by Adrian Strickland in 1972. He was helped by the late Paul DeBono and myself. What was referred to in the article as “two sizeable flags” are in fact reproductions of the regimental colours of the King’s Own Malta Regiment. Adrian, Paul and I felt we had to paint the colours before the regiment was disbanded on March 31, 1972.