The house that changed

Renzo Piano it ain't

On a visit with my youngest to watch the magnificent sunset in Dwejra, Gozo I finally snapped one of this house. Finally because it is not the first time I have seen it. Unless the mists of time are playing tricks on me, it started off as a source of fear for me as a boy. Wild fantasy, macabre Gozitan legends and Ladybird ghost story books conspired to terrorise me. Why are there no windows and what is that mysterious staircase in the back? Who or rather what lived in a house with a balcony missing a door?

By my late teens, dark mystery gave way to a spell of speculation on Gozitan architectural creativity. Could the man who designed it be telling us something with the doorless balcony? Maybe the installation of a matching, equally inexplicable second one on the roof could offer a clue. Then I realised that on the whole architects in Malta, let alone Gozo, are not quite cutting edge.

When I was going through my Monty Python are gods phase, this house became the set for their take on the Romeo and Juliet balcony scene. I would imagine their lines. "Juliet, Juliet, where in bleeding heavens art thou". "What light through yonder window breaks. Where in God's name is the damn window?"

As I look at this house today it appears as it really is, an awful monument to the incessant and senseless drive to build ugliness on beautiful spots in Gozo.