Building science and professional ethics in nineteenth-century ecclesiastical architecture in Malta

Abstract

Acknowledgement: The author would like to thank the late Rev. Paul Caruana for his help in the translation of the original sources from Italian into English and Alessandra Bianco for her assistance in gathering historical photographic material related to Mosta Church.

This paper focuses on the Mosta Rotunda, the parish church of Mosta. Its construction started soon after the island became a colony. Its dome is an imposing architectural statement and a feat of building engineering structure in local masonry. Modelled on Hadrian’s Pantheon in Rome (118-128 AD), it has the third largest dome of any Christian church in Europe. It was designed in the Neoclassical idiom by the architect-engineer Giorgio Grognet de Vassé (1774-1862) who also supervised its construction. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate the building science and professional ethics underlying the design and construction of this outstanding nineteenth-century church.

peer-reviewed