The Inquisitors Palace is situated in Vittoriosa, Malta. The building initially housed the Magna Curia Castellania Melitensis, a civil tribunal established by Grand Master Juan de Homedes y Coscon in 1543. Currently, it is also home to a historic house museum and the national ethnography museum.
Built in around the 1530s, what today is known as the Inquisitor’s Palace initially housed the Magna Curia Castellania Melitensis, a civil tribunal established by Grand Master Juan de Homedes y Coscon in 1543, until the institution moved to the then-newly built Valletta in 1572.
Two years later, Pietro Dusina arrived in Malta as its first Inquisitor and Apostolic Delegate of Pope Gregory XIII. Grand Master Jean de la Cassière offered him this building and thus it got the name still in use to date. Inquisitors in Malta served in their dual role as supreme judges of the Holy Office and Apostolic Delegates representing the Vatican’s interests in Malta. The Palace is an architectural gem, very well documented and so full of contrasts for it was fashioned to generate awe towards a powerful ecclesiastic diplomat in a sophisticated residence, and inspire reverence and repentance through a a tribunal, inclusive of an austere prison complex.
The Inquisition was abolished by the French upon their arrival in 1798. The building served French and British rules, as well as the Dominican Order for a period of time after the WWII.
This place must have inspired great fear, Cherie
It did in its day although security wasn’t tight so some prisoners were able to escape.
I have a feeling you saw many things we didn’t, Cherry, and probably vice versa.
Yes you definately saw things that we didn’t. I know I want to go back to pick up some of the things that I missed
The museum is rather “empty”?
I mean big space with little display??
The empty rooms are the prison cells and not the museum. The museum exhibits are interesting, although I don’t have any photos of them.
We visited about an hour after I mislaid my camera so my head wasn’t completely in photo taking mode.