Valletta Malta — Limestone City Aerial
142.60 £
Valletta, Malta photographed from above — the Baroque capital built on a peninsula between the Grand Harbour and Marsamxett Harbour, the uniform pale honey limestone creating a single-material city visible in total from 300 metres.
Description
Valletta is Europe’s smallest capital city and the only European capital contained within a UNESCO World Heritage site — a Baroque grid city built on a peninsula between the Grand Harbour and Marsamxett Harbour by the Knights of St John between 1566 and 1571. The city’s construction entirely in Maltese limestone globigerina — the pale honey-coloured local stone — gives the aerial photograph a quality unique in European urban photography: a complete city visible in its entirety from 300 metres, every building in a single material palette of warm pale stone. This image was made from a helicopter at 300 metres at 10am when the sun is at an angle that creates shadow definition on the Baroque facades without producing the harsh contrasts of midday. The Grand Harbour — one of the largest and deepest natural harbours in the Mediterranean — is visible to the right of the peninsula, the Fort St Angelo on the opposite Vittoriosa headland identifiable in the background.
