Palazzo Falson, a cool house in a silent city

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Sue Ward pays a visit to Palazzo Falson, Historic House Museum, Mdina, Malta

As the UK suffered under continual rainfall this summer, I found myself in the ancient walled city – the ‘Silent City’ – of Mdina in Malta. The narrow winding streets sweltered in the 42°C heat, and you could easily imagine the Phoenicians and then the Romans living here. Most of the buildings, however, date from when Malta was conquered by the Normans in 1091 AD and they fortified Mdina. In 1530 Malta passed to the Order of Knights of the Hospital of St John of Jerusalem who, at end of the 17th century when an earthquake destroyed many buildings, had to rebuild, which they did in the baroque style.

The Cathedral of the Conversion of St Paul is such a building and is fronted by a large square where tourist-filled carriages are drawn by patient horses who on the day of my visit sweltered in the oppressive heat. On one side of the square is the Cathedral museum, and your five euros entry to the cathedral also allows you into this religion-led museum. Legend has it that St Paul resided in the city after being shipwrecked on these islands.  

Mdina is a very atmospheric place and if you are there at lunchtime the streets are peaceful as the tourists flock into the restaurants and cafés, while the horses stand patiently in the shade. It is then that you can let your imagination roam freely and envisage mediaeval knights going about their business down the narrow alleys.

Within Mdina is the Palazzo Falson Historic House Museum, where I spent a couple of very happy – and cool – hours and can highly recommend a visit. The house, the origins of which date back to the first half of the 13th century with later mediaeval additions, was owned by a Captain Olof Frederick Gollcher. Born in Valetta, he served in the British Army in both world wars. He first purchased part of the palazzo with his mother in 1927, acquiring the remainder in 1938, making it into a home for him and his wife ‘Nella’, and renaming it the Norman House.

Captain Olof was a great collector of objets d’art and historical relics, and had 45 collections, including, books, paintings, carpets and pipes! When he died he wished that the Norman House be opened to the public as a museum and proposed that it should be taken over by the Venerable Order of the Knights of St John of Jerusalem in the British Realm. The Order felt, however, that it could not take the house on, so it passed to the Captain Olof Gollcher OBE Art and Archaeological Foundation. In 2002 extensive restoration to the house and its thousands of artefacts commenced. The museum finally opening its doors in 2007.

You enter the museum via the Courtyard, with its beautiful  Siculo-Renaissance staircase installed by Gollcher himself, its mellow yellow stones forming a backdrop to cascading Bougainvillea.   The oldest part of the museum is the mediaeval refectory, home to various small collections, while the armoury  holds many types of weapons. The strong room holds several  pieces of silver, and the sitting and drawing rooms contain several baroque paintings including a number of portraits, biblical, mythological and marine scenes. The 17th-century paintings in this collection include ones after Sir Anthony Van Dyck, Nicolas Poussin, Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, David Teniers the Younger and Mattia Preti, whose large work Lucretia Stabbing Herself, dominates the drawing room. 

Olof Gollcher received his tertiary education in London and studied as an artist and art critic. He had paintings exhibited at the Royal Academy and the Salon des Artistes in Paris. On the ground floor of the museum is his studio, with paintings of him and fellow artists smoking their pipes. They were members of the ‘Confraternita della Pipa’, or the Brotherhood of The Pipe! They exhibited in the Via Margutta in Rome, and they had their own emblem, costumes and rites, and held many parties. I never did findout if Nella was invited. Olof was a keen contributor, and instrumental in building up a vibrant art scene in Malta.

Olof Gollocher OBE was an avid collector and we are lucky that his collection has survived. For the visitor the fact that they are situated in what was a private house is an added bonus. Well worth a visit if you find yourself in Mdina.