Notre Dame Gate (Porta Cotoner)

A tourist reads inscriptions on Porta Cotoner in Paola while two ladies return home with shopping from the nearby market in Birgu (Vittoriosa). Notre Dame Gate was built by the Order of St John in the 1670s during the reign of Grand Master Fra Nicola Cotoner, founder of the Cottoner Lines (fortifications) of which it forms an integral part. This is one of the seven gates built into the curtain walls of the Cottonera girdle and was meant to serve as the magna-porta into the region. Its architecture is among the best representatives of the baroque military style which combines the linear austerity of military design with the grandiose albeit heavy ornamentation of the high-baroque period. Its present form may date from the time of Grand Master Perellos. The gate's ditch was filled in and the drawbridge removed sometime after the 1930s, while the tenaille was demolished. The gate was damaged by aerial bombardment during World War II, when one of the adjacent barrack blocks received a direct hit.Notre Dame Gate remains the highest building in Cottonera from which a good part of the south-eastern coast and anything up to Naxxar-Ridge and Mdina can be seen.


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