Wignacourt Arch
ornamental arch in Malta
The Wignacourt Arch known as the Fleur-De-Lys Gate (Maltese: L-Arkata ta' Wignacourt magħrufa bħala l-Bieb ta' Fleur-De-Lys) is an ornamental arch located on the boundary between Fleur-de-Lys (a suburb of Birkirkara) and Santa Venera, Malta. The arch was originally built in 1615 as part of the Wignacourt Aqueduct, but it was destroyed in 1943 and 1944. A replica of the arch was constructed in 2015 and inaugurated on 28 April 2016.
Original arch
The Wignacourt Aqueduct was constructed between 1610 and 1615 to carry water from springs in Dingli and Rabat to the Maltese capital Valletta. It was named after Alof de Wignacourt, the Grand Master of the Order of St. John, who partially financed its construction.
The aqueduct was carried through underground pipes or over a series of stone arches where there were depressions in the ground level. To commemorate the construction of the aqueduct, the Wignacourt Arch was constructed at an area where the aqueduct crossed the road leading from Valletta to Mdina. The Baroque archway had a large arch in the centre, and a smaller arch on either side. It was decorated with three fleurs-de-lis, a relief of Wignacourt's coat of arms, and two marble plaques with Latin inscriptions.
“Wignacourt Arch” enters the record as ornamental arch in Malta. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Wignacourt, Arch and ornamental can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “Wignacourt Arch” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.