Yoko: The Apartment With the Gallarija

Every apartment in the building carries something of the original townhouse. One of them lets you sit inside it. Yoko has the gallarija — the enclosed timber balcony over the street — and it changes the character of the whole apartment in a way we did not fully anticipate when we rebuilt it.

In short: Yoko is one of the four 70 sqm apartments, with a rebuilt traditional Maltese balcony, patterned tiles underfoot in it, and south-facing light through the day. Inside: a separate double bedroom, a second room with a full workstation and day bed, two bathrooms, and the same specification as the rest of the building. For one or two guests, three nights to six months.

The balcony it’s named for

When we bought the building, the gallarija was gone — replaced at some point with an aluminium balcony, which is what happened to a great many of them. We had a new one made the traditional way, by people who still build them that way, and then did the unromantic part: a thermal break and double glazing, so it performs like something built this decade while looking like something built in the twenties.

What you get from that is a room that is neither inside nor outside. Glass on three sides; the purtelli, the little hinged glass doors, opening outward; and behind them the tendini, the fabric hangings you draw to soften the light or shut it out. The street is below you rather than beside you. It is the original point of the design — a place to observe the town from within your own house — and it turns out to work exactly as well now as it did a century ago.

You step into it through a stone arch — and when we bought the building, we did not know it was there. Peeling back layers of old paint during the restoration revealed that the arch had been filled in at some point, leaving only a narrow doorway out onto the balcony. We took out the infill and the old door and opened the arch back up.

It changed the apartment. The gallarija now reads as an extension of the living room while remaining a space of its own: the arch separates without closing off, so you are on the balcony and still in the room at the same time. It also brings the warm colour and soft edges of limestone right into the middle of the apartment.

At its apex we fitted a single light with a very warm glow, matched to the colour of the street lamps outside on Triq San Albert. In the evening the light inside the arch and the light in the street become the same light, and the balcony turns into exactly what a gallarija was always for: the place where the house and the town meet.

The tiles, and the light

The balcony floor carries Maltese patterned tiles, and because the apartment faces south, the light crosses them all day — sharp in the morning, broad at midday, low and gold by evening.

They are not salvaged originals, and we’d rather say so. Reclaimed tiles come out of other people’s buildings, which is a poor way to honour a tradition. Instead we went to a Maltese artisan who still makes cement tiles the original way — powdered marble, white cement and pigment, poured colour by colour into a metal mould and cured under pressure, one tile at a time. The moulds are theirs and the patterns are traditional. The colours are ours, picked for this balcony rather than chosen off a chart.

We could have simply run the apartment’s floor tile out into the balcony. It would have been cheaper, quicker and nobody would have complained. But a gallarija is not a corner of a living room with glass around it — it is its own small room with three hundred years of history behind it, and putting a standard floor in it would have been a quiet way of pretending otherwise.

The gallarija is not the only source of light on that wall. Further along it, directly above the kitchen sink, is a south-facing window rebuilt entirely in timber in the traditional way — double glazed with a thermal break, and closed with a spanjoletta, the long turning bolt that has locked Maltese windows for generations. Inside, instead of shutters, it has wooden panels that fold back as far as you choose: a crack for a line of morning sun across the counter, or fully open to flood the kitchen. Between the tendini on the balcony and the panels on the window, you set the light in the room yourself, by hand, the way these houses were always meant to work.

A guest described this better than we can. They wrote that the balcony “made the whole place feel really special,” that the apartment was “bright and airy, thanks to the south-facing light,” and that “the way the light shifted across the tiles throughout the day gave the space so much character.” That is the apartment’s entire argument, made by somebody who paid to be there.

And the name

Yoko Ono — artist first, Beatle-adjacent second, and someone who spent decades being blamed by strangers for the end of a band. All five apartments here are named after women, and all five names are pieces of music: Gloria, Taylor, Maggie and Michelle are the others.

Yoko got the gallarija because it is the apartment that most obviously carries the old townhouse’s character — the one people notice from the street before they know anything else about the place.

What else is in it

Yoko is a full 70 square metres, laid out as a separate double bedroom, a living and dining space with the kitchen, and a second room that does several jobs — workstation with monitor and adjustable chair, a 55-inch screen facing a full-size day bed, and shelving to fill with your own things.

Two bathrooms: a travertine-clad ensuite, and a main bathroom in marble with a rain shower. Materials chosen to be touched rather than to wipe clean fastest. Blackout and acoustic drapes, air conditioning in every room, wired Ethernet, USB sockets within reach of every seat, a Hario V60 coffee kit, a Marshall speaker, and a lift.

Who it suits

Yoko is the apartment we suggest to people whose reason for coming to Malta includes Malta. If you want the island’s architecture to be part of the stay rather than something you photograph on a day out, this is the one — particularly for longer stays, when the balcony stops being a feature and becomes where you have coffee.

It is equally the one we’d point a winter guest toward: south-facing light is worth a great deal in January, and a Maltese winter is milder than people expect but the sun is lower and more precious.

Two guests maximum, as everywhere here. And no, we still don’t call it luxury — it is a well-made room in an old building, which we think is better.

Frequently asked questions

Can you stay in an apartment with a traditional Maltese balcony?

Yes, though they are rarer than the streetscape suggests, since many gallariji were replaced with aluminium over recent decades. At Morrison Court in Gzira, the Yoko apartment has a rebuilt traditional timber gallarija — made the traditional way, then double-glazed with a thermal break.

What is it like to sit in a gallarija?

Enclosed but not shut in. You are over the street rather than beside it, with glass on three sides, hinged purtelli that open outward, and fabric tendini behind them to control the light, so you can watch the town without being in it. In practice guests use it as a reading spot in the morning and an evening corner with a drink.

Which Morrison Court apartment has the Maltese balcony?

Yoko — one of the four 70 sqm apartments, with south-facing light, original-pattern Maltese tiles in the balcony, a separate bedroom, a second room with a full workstation and day bed, and two bathrooms.

Yoko is one of five self-contained apartments in a reimagined 1920s townhouse in Gzira. Check dates at morrisoncourt.com.