A tour of crumbling Malta villa where the Queen lived in her 20s

VALLETTA: It is the only property outside of Britain that Queen Elizabeth called home.

A crumbling villa near Malta’s capital, Valletta, where the heir to the English throne lived between 1949 and 1951, is about to get a new lease of life as a museum of the Mediterranean island’s links with the United Kingdom and the royal family.

The arcaded, twostorey property is a shadow of its former self. The rooms are bare, paint is peeling off the walls to reveal old murals beneath, the enclosed garden is overgrown and part of a colonnaded belvedere in it has collapsed.

Now that the government of Malta has finally acquired the Villa Guardamangia after years of trying, it hopes to restore it to its former state when it was a charming, if relatively modest home for the future British queen.

The renovation could cost as much as 10 million euros, said Heritage Malta curator Kenneth Gambin during a recent walk-through to show off the dilapidated property.

“We are planning to invite anyone who remembers the royal couple when they lived in Malta to meet us, share their memories and possibly their photos,” he said.

SWEEPING VIEWS Princess Elizabeth was in the first years of her marriage at the time, and moved to Malta when her husband, Philip, was based there in command of a Royal Navy frigate.

The villa stands proudly in a narrow street at the top of Guardamangia Hill, and at the time commanded sweeping views of the harbour of Marsamxett and Valletta, where the Navy’s frigates were moored. Much of the structure was built in limestone in the mideighteenth century as a summer house.

Additions early in the nineteenth century included a belvedere overlooking a large, enclosed garden that served as a backdrop to one of the most frequently used pictures of the young royal couple on the island.

Malta was then a bustling British colony and a key naval base in the middle of the Mediterranean and on the route to India.

Guardamangia Hill itself was named after a “guardia” or guard, which Maltese and British troops jointly mounted as they trapped French Napoleonic forces for almost two years in Valletta, a siege that led the British to take over Malta at the islanders’ invitation in 1800.

— Reuters