1926 Sliema chalet photos reveal birth of Maltese summer swagger

In pictures: Għar id-Dud Chalet, 1926 – when Sliema’s seaside swagger was born

The year is 1926. Malta is still three decades away from independence, cars are a novelty on the island’s dusty roads, and King George V’s profile graces every farthing in your pocket. Yet along Sliema’s once-sleepy shoreline something daring has just opened: a timber-and-iron pleasure pavilion jutting into the blue like a jazz-age exclamation mark. Locals call it il-Chalet ta’ Għar id-Dud, and from the moment its striped canvas umbrellas unfurl it becomes the stage upon which modern Maltese leisure learns to strut.

Freshly digitised photographs, released this week by the National Archives, show the chalet in its infancy: couples in boaters and drop-waist dresses posing on the diving platform; barefoot urchins hawking ħobż biż-żejt wrapped in newspaper; British officers in plus-fours queuing for ginger beer at the cedar-shake bar. In the background, the limestone arch of Għar id-Dud—once a smugglers’ cave—frames the scene like a natural proscenium. The images are deceptively idyllic; they also capture a social revolution. For the first time, Valletta’s shop-girls and Three Cities dockworkers could hop on a tram, pay a few pennies, and claim a slice of the same horizon previously reserved for the colonial elite.

“Before the chalet, sea bathing was medicinal, not recreational,” explains fashion historian Dr. Ritienne Zammit. “Doctors prescribed it for gout, but respectable women entered the water inside wooden ‘bathing machines’ so no one saw their ankles. The chalet shattered that prudery. Mixed sunbathing, lounge music, even the first mini-skirts—Maltese modernity was choreographed right here on these planks.”

Built by the Sliema Swimming & Aquatic Sports Association on a 99-year lease, the structure was a marvel of prefabricated ingenuity. Iron columns arrived from Sheffield, teak boards from Burma, and a 30-metre springboard that locals swear could launch you clear into the 21st century. At night, acetylene lamps turned the water emerald, while saxophones drifted across Marsamxett harbour. Within months, the chalet had its own brass band, a ladies’ water-ballet troupe, and a kiosk serving iced coffee—an alien concoction that older residents branded “lukewd tal-Ingliż” (English cold nonsense).

The impact rippled beyond leisure. Boatmen who once ferried produce from Cottonera pivoted to taxi-ing bathers; fishermen began renting rods; and the first ice-cream cart on the promenade—operated by Toni tal-Ġelat from Birkirkara—became such a success that he sent two sons to university on the proceeds. “The chalet taught Malta that fun could be an industry,” says economist Prof. Philip von Brockdorff. “It seeded the service mentality that today underpins our tourism sector.”

Of course, not everyone applauded. Church bells denounced “immodest costumes”, and Il-Berqa newspaper warned that “foreign frivolity” would erode Maltese virtue. Yet the tide—literal and metaphorical—proved unstoppable. When WWII broke out, the chalet’s deck was commandeered for anti-aircraft drills; photos show sandbags where sun-loungers once stood. A 1941 raid splintered the diving board, but servicemen still danced to wind-up gramophones amid the rubble, a defiant echo of pre-war innocence.

Post-war, the pavilion was rebuilt in concrete, eventually morphing into the squat restaurant Maltese millennials know today. Few realise the current façade hides the bones of that 1926 pioneer. Heritage NGO Wirt iż-Żejtă has now launched a virtual-reality app that overlays the original timber structure onto present-day seafront selfies, letting users time-travel with a swipe.

As Sliema braces for yet another tower-block development, the 1926 photographs feel like postcards from a parallel Malta—one that believed the sea was a commons, not a backdrop for luxury flats. They remind us that before the cranes and catamarans, before Instagram sunsets and €15 cocktails, a generation of Maltese invented summer on a creaking platform above Għar id-Dud. Their rolled-up trousers and daring smiles still whisper across the water: jien ta’ Malta, u dan il-bahar huwa tiegħi ukoll.