July 3, 2020
Crafting Traditional Maltese Balconies
Traditional balconies certainly go a long way in defining the character of the Maltese urban landscape. Through their abundance of colours, materials, textures and decorative motifs, they enrich the visual aspect of Malta’s streets. Projecting into the urban space, they dominate and articulate it. The origins of the typical wooden Maltese balcony hark back to ancient times and to the ‘muxrabija’, a creation of the Arab world. Literally a peep-hole looking from the inside outwards, the ‘muxrabija’ was generally a wooden window frame which screened the window space completely. It was effective in allowing the person on the inside to observe all that was going on outside, whilst not being visible to the people in the street below. ...
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