Malta Hosts Explosive Launch of ‘Roma Segreta’: How Rome’s Hidden Secrets Mirror Valletta’s Tourism Battle

Book on the hidden side of Rome to launch in Malta
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Malta will get a backstage pass to the Eternal City next week when “Roma Segreta: The Rome You Never Knew” debuts at the Malta Book Festival. Author—and honorary Maltese—Dr. Alessandro Farrugia will unveil the English-language edition of his cult Italian bestseller on 3 May at 19:30 in the Mediterranean Conference Centre, Valletta. For an island whose own capital is a UNESCO honey-pot under siege by mass tourism, the timing feels almost prophetic.

Farrugia, 42, grew up in Rome’s Garbatella district but has spent the last decade shuttling between Trastevere and his wife’s native Sliema. While researching the book he kept returning to Malta, he says, “because the questions were the same: how do we keep living in places that the whole world wants to photograph?” The result is 288 pages of back-alley osterie, illegal catacombs, and rooftop apiaries that tourists never reach—plus a chapter cheekily titled “The Valletta Syndrome” that draws direct lines between Rome’s battle with cruise ships and Malta’s own St. John’s Co-Cathedral queues.

Local booksellers say pre-orders have already outsold every Italian title since Elena Ferrante’s last novel. “We expected expats and language students,” explains Kris Vella from Sliema’s Bookworm, “but Maltese readers are just as hungry. They recognise the pattern—historic centre becomes movie set, rents rise, locals scatter.” That resonance is why the Malta Tourism Authority stepped in as co-sponsor. MTA chief Carlo Micallef tells *Hot Malta* the book “offers us a mirror and a manual” as Valletta 2030 regeneration plans inch forward. “If Rome can reclaim its courtyards, maybe we can rethink Strait Street without turning it into a theme park.”

The launch itself will be characteristically unconventional. Farrugia is ditching the podium for a pop-up *enoteca* featuring Lazio wines rarely exported beyond Italy. Maltese importer Luke Bezzina is ferrying 300 bottles of Cesanese del Piglio across the channel, “because stories taste better with terroir.” Meanwhile, Valletta band The Travellers will reinterpret Roman folk songs in Maltese—proof, says Farrugia, that “Mediterranean cities swap lullabies even when politicians build walls.”

But the real buzz is about the after-party. Farrugia has teamed up with heritage NGO Din l-Art Ħelwa to host a midnight torch-light tour of Valletta’s own hidden spaces: a forgotten WWII bunker beneath the Law Courts and a Knights-period wine cellar bricked up since 1798. Tickets sold out in 47 minutes, with proceeds split between restoring Garbatella’s community theatre and a new roof for the Valletta Green Library. “It’s solidarity in stone,” beams DLĦ president Maria Grazia Cassar. “Two capitals lending each other scaffolding.”

For Maltese readers, the book arrives at a cultural crossroads. Just last month, Valletta’s mayor warned that short-let apartments have surged 60 % since 2019; Gozitans are fighting similar battles in Marsalforn. “Rome shows the worst-case scenario,” says University of Malta anthropologist Dr. Ritienne Xerri, “but also the grassroots fightback—citizen cooperatives buying up decaying palazzi, turning them into affordable housing and artist studios. Malta needs that blueprint before the cranes win.”

Schools are already taking note. St. Aloysius College has added *Roma Segreta* to its Year 9 reading list; students will Skype with Garbatella teens about urban identity. “It’s not just geography,” insists teacher Ramona Pace. “It’s citizenship. Our kids need to see that cities are verbs, not postcards.”

Back in the Conference Centre, Farrugia is rehearsing his closing line: “Every wall has two stories—the one tourists selfie, and the one neighbours whisper.” Malta, with its honey-limestone ramparts and Instagram-famous balconies, knows both versions intimately. On 3 May, we’ll find out which story we want to write next.