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The Fougasse

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Fougasse near Madliena Tower One of the most interesting means of coastal defence created by the knights around the potential landing spots of the Maltese Islands was the fougasse, a rock-hewn mortar which was designed to fire a large number of different sized stones onto approaching enemy ships. Although it is not a Maltese invention, the local version was a unique adaptation of the fougasse, both in its method of construction as well as its unorthodox application as a means of coastal defence . In the first decades of the 1700s, when the Order was strongly influenced by French engineers, a coastal defence scheme started to be implemented which included, the fougasse. In 1715 the council ordered 60 stone mortars to be cut at vulnerable points around the coasts of the island. no action appears to have been taken until 1741, under the direction of Marandon, that these weapons started being formed. Marandon fired his first experimental foggazza a selci on 28 September 1740. Dr. Stephen S...
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Glossary of Architectural features

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  Arzella or Scalloped Doorway British period townhouses in Malta usually have a design referred to as stylised arzella or scallop doorway. Typical townhouse doors are less elaborate, however some examples featured a scallop shell design still exist. This served as decoration of a functional entrance which served to hide the meeting of the thickness of the double skinned wall with the doorway which was necessarily much narrower. This example is found in Ħal Luqa . Corbelled Walls   When going around the local countryside and in certain rural areas, one can see rubble walls surmounted by a projecting corbel, above which the wall continues. The scope of this wall was to stop the climbing of he wall from the street into the garden. Although originally this was aimed at stopping rodents from getting into gardens, the deterrent proved effective on humans too, such that in Sicily this is feature is called "para lupi" or wolf shield/stopper. Since such gardens usually contained cit...
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Salt Pans - Salini tal-Melħ

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Salt is one of the ancient commodities such that it brought prosperity to places where it was available. It was deemed to be so important that Roman legionaries were given part of their wages in salt, resulting in a word we still use to this day: salārium or salary. The origins of salt production around the Maltese Islands are unknown, which leads one to assume that the production of this primary good from a renewable source has been established from well before the formalisation of its production by the Knights. The name of the locality of Mellieħa comes from the salt pans originally extant in the vicinity of Għadira which are denoted as saline vecchie (old salt pans) in maps produced during the time of the Knights in Malta. Gian Franġisk Abela refer to them as primitive pans in his 1647 publication and from the description it appears they were located more or less where the bird sanctuary is today. One of the fresco paintings of the Great siege by Perez d'Aleccio  in the Grandma...
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