Pietà’s Hidden Gem Re-Opens: Marina Garden Reborn After €1.2 Million Make-Over

Pietà’s Hidden Gem Re-Opens: Marina Garden Reborn After €1.2 Million Make-Over
By Hot Malta Staff

Pietà’s waterfront has a new heartbeat. On Saturday morning, the iron gates of Marina Garden—shut since 2019—swung open to reveal a sun-splashed promenade, native salt-resistant planting and a children’s splash-pad that had toddlers shrieking before the ribbon was even cut. For villagers who grew up skating down the old asphalt alleys and sneaking midnight cigarettes under the ficus trees, the reopening felt like watching a childhood friend walk out of rehab: familiar bones, brand-new glow.

The €1.2 million project, bank-rolled by Infrastructure Malta and designed by local firm Studio 3LX, is being hailed as a template for “micro-regeneration” in space-starved harbour towns. Where cracked concrete once pooled rainwater, permeable limestone now channels runoff straight into the sea. Eighty-two invasive acacias have been replaced with 230 low-water specimens—think olive, lentisk and the rare Maltese rock-centaury—creating a coastal meadow that hums with bees. Benches are carved from recycled fishing crates; lighting is downward-facing to protect migratory shearwaters. Even the colour palette is hyper-local: railings match the pale green of traditional luzzu eyes, while the paving echoes the honey tone of Pietà’s 18th-century parish church.

Mayor Keith Tanti calls the garden “the village’s lung, only now it’s had a transplant.” Standing by the new accessible ramp, he recalls how, during the pandemic, residents queued for vaccines inside the same rail tunnel once used by British submariners. “We realised public space isn’t a luxury—it’s infrastructure,” he says, wiping sea-spray from his glasses. “If we want young families to stay on the island, we need places where prams and wheelchairs feel welcome.”

That inclusivity is already drawing crowds. Eileen Cassar, 68, brings her twin grand-daughters to the splash-pad every afternoon. “Before, we crossed the road to the petrol-station café just to find shade,” she laughs. “Now the girls call this ‘the beach without sand’.” Nearby, a group of Ukrainian students queue for gelato at a kiosk run by former refugees—part of a social-enterprise clause baked into the concession tender. Revenue from the kiosk and paddle-boat rentals will fund yearly maintenance, ring-fenced in a dedicated fund overseen by the Pietà Local Council.

Culturally, the garden doubles as an open-air museum. QR-coded plaques link to oral-history clips: 92-year-old boat-builder Ċikku Degiorgio recounts hoisting sails here in the 1940s; poet Immanuel Mifsud reads a stanza about teenage kisses behind the oleander bushes. On the first Sunday of every month, the space transforms into a “salt-market” where artisans sell sea-glass jewellery and olive-wood rosaries, reviving crafts once practised by Pietà’s casali dockworkers. Even the name—Marina Garden, not “park”—is deliberate, a nod to the 19th-century British Admiralty maps that labelled the inlet “Marina Piccola”.

Not everyone is clapping. Some residents grumble that the skate ramp is “too small” and the security cameras “too many”. Others fear the project will turbo-charge rents. Yet early data hints at softer gentrification: a 2023 University of Malta survey found 78 % of visitors arrive on foot or by bus, and property agents report interest mainly in long-term lets rather than Airbnbs. “If we keep the garden free and the programming hyper-local, we can avoid the Valletta model,” argues architect Romina Delia, who volunteered on the consultation panels. “This isn’t pretty-fication; it’s resistance to abandonment.”

As the sun sets, the garden’s new LED masts flicker on, tracing the curve of the inlet like a string of low-rise stars. Teenagers swap TikToks for card games; an elderly Gozitan couple dances to a transistor radio; a toddler clutches a hermit crab discovered in the rock-pool. In the background, the capital’s skyline glitters, but the soundscape—lapping water, gulls, laughter—belongs to Pietà. Marina Garden is small, just 7,000 square metres, yet it feels like Malta distilled: a limestone edge where history, migration and everyday life keep rewriting the same salty page.