page_title: Ġnien is-Sultan
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Ġnien is-Sultan / History
caption_attribution_description: Français&#160;: Vue de la cité de La Valette, île de Malte, par Augustin François Lemaître (1797-1870)
context_page_description: Ġnien is-Sultan, also known as the Giardino della Marina, the Grand Master's Garden or Lascaris Garden, was a garden in Valletta, Malta. It was established in the 17th century by Giovanni Paolo Lascaris, and it included a summer residence for the Grand Master. It was a masterpiece of a Baroque garden designed by Francesco Buonamici.
  The summer residence and part of the garden was destroyed by the British military in the 19th century to make way for Lascaris Battery, a casemated artillery battery which was named after the Grand Master who had built the gardens. The remaining part of the garden was destroyed in the 20th century, and its site is now occupied by social housing blocks. The only major remain of the garden is a Baroque fountain in situ.
context_section_description: When Francesco Laparelli designed the fortifications of Valletta in 1566, he designed a two-tiered demi-bastion known as St. Peter and St. Paul Bastion on the eastern extremity of the city's land front, overlooking the Grand Harbour. The demi-bastion was too high to offer adequate defence, so in the early 17th century the rocky shore below it was reshaped into a faussebraye (or tenaille) with a rock-hewn ditch stretching from the bastion to the Del Monte Gate. Construction was entrusted to the local contractor Maestro Xara. This rampart became known as Lascaris Bastion, after Grand Master Giovanni Paolo Lascaris, who had commissioned its construction.
  Soon after the rampart was completed, Grand Master Lascaris requisitioned the site and he built a summer residence with a garden there. The garden contained a belvedere and several fountains which were supplied by water from the Wignacourt Aqueduct. The garden became the focal point of the Valletta Marina, which also included the Church of Our Lady of Liesse, Neptune's Fountain and the Del Monte Gate. The area became one of the most picturesque parts of Valletta, and it was depicted in several paintings between the 17th and 19th centuries. 
  The baroque garden, which included a number of evergreen fruit trees mainly consisting of lemon trees, the triumphal arch (the gate) and two elaborate baroque fountains were designed by architect Buonamici.
  By 1839, the Grand Master's summer residence housed the superintendent of the quarantine department and of the port of Valletta.
  The summer residence and part of the garden was destroyed in the mid-19th century to make way for the Lascaris Battery, a casemated artillery battery which was built by the British military in order to defend the Grand Harbour, in particular the newly built drydock. Eventually, case bottege began to be built on the remaining parts of the garden, and the site was fully built up as social housing blocks in the 1980s.
caption: An 1848 engraving of the Valletta Marina, with the garden instead of Lascaris Battery
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