History
The San Anton Palace and its Gardens owe their origin to the Knight Antoine de Paule, a Frenchman knight from the Langue de Provence, who was elected 54tth Grand Master of the Order of St. John in 1623.
Grand Master Antoine de Paule, who also founded Paola in 1626, acquired a sizeable plot of land near the Attard and set about building a country villa that was nearer to Valletta than Verdala Palace.
He planned the villa on generous proportions so as to provide accommodation for his guests and for his large domestic staff which is said to have included cooks, food tasters, torch bearers, pantryboys, wig makers, a winder of the clocks in the palace, physicians, as well as a baker to make black bread forfeeding his hunting dogs! The Grand Master named the villa ‘Sainte Antoine’ after his patron saint, St Antony of Padua.
De Paule also provided the palace with a private chapel dedicated to the Madonna del Pilar with a vault decorated with the coats-of-arms of Grandmasters especially Emanuel de Rohan-Polduc. De Paule also designed a symmetrical plan to the garden that consisted of more orange groves in the beginning. These oranges, he sent away as gifts to those he desired to honour.
Successive Grand Masters were to use the place as their country-residence. After Napoleon I’s stay in Malta, the Palace was the seat of the National Assembly of France from February 1799 to the departure of the French in September 1800. It was later to become the residence of the Governor and of the Governor-General of Malta.
Since 1974 San Anton Palace is the Official residence of the President of Malta.
A mausoleum dedicated to Grand Master Fra' Antoine De Paule may be found at John's Co-Cathedral in Valletta in the Chapel of the Langue of Provence.
Read more about this topic: San Anton Palace
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“In all history no class has been enfranchised without some selfish motive underlying. If to-day we could prove to Republicans or Democrats that every woman would vote for their party, we should be enfranchised.”
—Carrie Chapman Catt (1859–1947)
“At present cats have more purchasing power and influence than the poor of this planet. Accidents of geography and colonial history should no longer determine who gets the fish.”
—Derek Wall (b. 1965)
“The history of the world is none other than the progress of the consciousness of freedom.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)