Underground cisterns located underneath the Archbishop’s Palace will be open during the Valletta Green Festival which will be running from the 25th April till the 30th April, Valletta 2018 Chairman Jason Micallef announced earlier today.

The underground caves house fresh running water which has been around since before Valletta’s construction and which flows to this day. The cisterns, along with the garden of the Archbishop’s Palace and the garden at St Catherine’s Monastery will be open during the weekend of the festival on the 28th-30th April, at 9am-noon and 4pm-7pm.

As with previous editions, the infiorata, constructed of 80,000 potted plants will also be decorating Pjazza San Ġorg for the duration of the festival and pays tribute to Malta’s Presidency of the Council of the European Union. During the weekend, musical acts Jackson Family Traditional Music Band and Tikka Banda who will be interacting with festival goers in the square.

Other activities will also be spread around the city with an Open Mic/Palk Ħieles event taking place at the Camarata Bar on Friday 28th April at 8pm and an upcycled musical instrument workshop and performance taking place at Maori Bar on Saturday 29th April at 7pm. Storytelling activities will also be taking place in front of the Law Courts throughout Saturday and Sunday at the Valletta 2018 Mobile Unit. These workshops are tied to Valletta 2018’s other project Poetry in Potato Bags and will be given by Leanne Ellul. A Rag Rug workshop in which old materials are upcycled into rugs will also be taking place on Saturday 29th April at 10am, led by Angele Galea.

To highlight the festival’s environmental aspect, two clean ups will be taking place as part of the festival. On Saturday 22nd April, a sea clean-up will be taking place in Valletta, while a land and sea clean-up will also be taking place at L-Aħrax tal-Mellieħa on the 30th April.

The Valletta Green Festival is organised by Valletta 2018 in collaboration with the Maltese Archdiocese, the Ministry for Transport and Infastructure; the Ministry for Sustainable Development, The Environment and Climate Change; the Environmental Landscaping Consortium; the Parks Department, as part of the Tree 4 U (34U) campaign; and WasteServ Malta Ltd; with the support of Inizjamed and several NGOS including BirdLife, Fish4Tomorrow, Shark Lab, Żibel Malta and Friend of the Earth.

More information on the Valletta Green Festival programme can be found of valletta2018.org