Alexander|Gardjola Gardens, Senglea — the carved eye watching the port

At the very tip of Senglea, where the peninsula runs out of land, there is a small stone watchtower corbelled out over the water. Someone in the sixteenth century carved an eye and an ear into its flanks, along with a crane, so that nobody could mistake what the tower was for: the harbour was being watched, and the watchers wanted you to know. It is called the gardjola, and it is the single most photographed object in the Grand Harbour.

Senglea's waterfront was among the harbour locations the Alexander production used to build Alexandria. The logic is easy to see from the point. Stand here and you are inside a bowl of honey-coloured limestone — Valletta's bastions on one side, Birgu and Fort St Angelo on the other, the whole thing dropping straight into deep working water. There is no natural horizon to give the modern game away. A port city can be extended in any direction the visual effects department likes.

The garden behind the tower is Safe Haven, a modest public strip of benches, palms and gravel that locals use in the evening. Senglea itself was flattened in 1941 and 1942 — the dockyard made it a target — and much of what stands is postwar rebuilding around the pieces that survived. The gardjola is one of the survivors. You reach it on foot from the Senglea gate in about ten minutes, or by dgħajsa across from Valletta.

Put your hand on the carved eye. It has been looking at that water for four hundred years, which is longer than any of the empires the film is about managed to last.

Photo: Wikimedia Commons.