Palazzo Fremaux
townhouse in Żejtun, Malta

Palazzo Fremaux, also known as Palazzo de Fremaux, Villa Fremaux or Villa de Fremaux, was a townhouse in Żejtun, Malta. The building, together with a next door townhouse, was used as a hospital during the French blockade of 1798–1800. Despite being a designated heritage building, it was demolished gradually between 1990 and 2003.
History
Palazzo Fremaux was a townhouse surrounded by extensive gardens, which belonged to Count Agostino Formosa de Fremaux, a Maltese nobleman who was the Dutch Consulate, and who supported the Jacobins and the French occupation of Malta. Following the outbreak of the Maltese uprising against French rule in June 1798, Żejtun became an important headquarters for the Maltese insurgents and their British allies.
The British tasked Michele Cachia, one of the Maltese leaders, with finding a large building in Żejtun to serve as a hospital for wounded British troops. No single building was large enough to house a hospital for wounded British, Maltese and Neapolitan soldiers, so four sites were chosen. These were Palazzo Fremaux and its next door townhouse, the old church of St. Gregory, a villa belonging to Bishop Vincenzo Labini and another villa which also belonged to the Count de Fremaux (now known as Villa Arrigo).
The occupiers of Palazzo Fremaux damaged parts of the building throughout its use as a hospital, and some interior walls probably had to be demolished in order to enlarge rooms into hospital wards.
The public source identifies “Palazzo Fremaux” as townhouse in Żejtun, Malta. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Palazzo, Fremaux and townhouse.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 15, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q24580954. Authority coordinates are 35.857, 14.530. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1798, 1800, 1990 and 2003.
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This entry incorporates text from “Palazzo Fremaux” 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.