Five Names: Yoko, Gloria, Taylor, Maggie and Michelle

Guests work out fairly quickly that the apartments aren’t numbered. They are called Yoko, Gloria, Taylor, Maggie and Michelle — five women’s names, each with a song or an instrument behind it. Nobody has ever asked us to explain them, and everybody eventually does.

In short: the building is named after Jim Morrison, and the apartments continue the thought. Yoko is Yoko Ono. Gloria is the song Van Morrison wrote and the Doors made their own. Taylor is the guitar. Maggie is a song on the very album our sign is drawn from. Michelle is the Beatles — and, quietly, my father and my daughter.

Yoko

Yoko Ono: artist first and Beatle-adjacent second, which is the order it should be. A conceptual artist with a body of work that predates and outlasts the marriage she is usually reduced to, and someone who spent decades being blamed by strangers for the end of a band.

It seemed a fitting name for the apartment with the gallarija — the one that most obviously carries the old townhouse’s character, and the one people notice first.

Gloria

Two Morrisons for the price of one. “Gloria” was written by Van Morrison and recorded by Them in 1964; the Doors took it into their live set and made it theirs, and recordings of Jim Morrison singing it have been released repeatedly since.

A song written by one Morrison and adopted by another, in a building named after the second. We could not have arranged that if we tried.

Taylor

The odd one out, and deliberately. Taylor is the guitar maker — one of the best-known acoustic builders in the world, founded in California in the 1970s and now the instrument on an enormous number of stages. There is also a Jack Johnson song called “Taylor,” which is well outside our era but does no harm.

Mostly, though, the name simply suited the room. Not every decision in a building has a footnote. Some things just fit, and a name that means both a woman and an instrument was too good to leave on the shelf.

Maggie

The best of the five, if we’re honest. “Maggie M’Gill” closes side two of Morrison Hotel — the Doors’ 1970 album, and the same record whose cover typeface was redrawn in gold leaf for the sign above our front door.

So one apartment is named after a track on the album the building is named after. There is also Rod Stewart’s “Maggie May” from 1971 if you prefer your reference a year later and considerably more famous. We don’t mind which one you hear.

Michelle

The Beatles, Rubber Soul, 1965 — the one with the French in the middle. It is the most straightforwardly beautiful song on this list and it belongs to the penthouse, which is the apartment with the terrace and the Valletta view.

It is also, and this is the part guests don’t know, made of two other names: part of my father’s and part of my daughter’s. One generation either side of me, folded into a single word, on the door of the room with the best view in the building. Of all the decisions here, it is the one I’d defend longest.

Why names at all

Because Apartment 3 tells a guest nothing except that there were at least two others. A name gives a room a character before anyone walks in, and it gives the building a shape — five distinct places rather than a block of identical units with different numbers screwed to the doors.

It also keeps the music running underneath everything, which is the point of the whole project. The sign is an album cover. The shelf holds records guests have left behind. The walls carry framed sleeves and a concert poster. Naming the apartments after women in songs is simply the same idea, applied to the doors.

And it means that when someone emails to ask whether Maggie is free in March, there is a small pleasure in the sentence that would be entirely absent from “is Unit 4 available.”

Frequently asked questions

What are the Morrison Court apartments called?

Yoko, Gloria, Taylor, Maggie and Michelle. All five are women's names, and each one carries a musical reference — from Yoko Ono to a song on the Doors album the building's sign is drawn from.

Why is Morrison Court called Morrison Court?

After Jim Morrison of The Doors. The gilded sign above the door recreates the typeface from the band's 1970 album Morrison Hotel, hand-lettered in gold leaf and shaped to fit a traditional Maltese fanlight.

Which apartment should I book at Morrison Court?

Yoko has the traditional Maltese balcony and south-facing light. Gloria, Taylor and Maggie are the other 70 sqm apartments, each with an open balcony and seating. Michelle is the penthouse studio, with a private terrace looking across to Valletta. All are for one or two guests.

Five self-contained apartments in a reimagined 1920s townhouse in Gzira, named after five women and five songs. Pick one at morrisoncourt.com.