Keeping and restoring traditional Maltese tiles

Patterned cement tiles — madum — are the floor most people are buying when they buy a townhouse or a house of character. They are also the floor most likely to be ruined in the first fortnight of ownership, usually by somebody with a bottle of something acidic and good intentions. This article covers what the tiles actually are, why that makes them fragile in a specific and predictable way, what a restorer does to them, and where you can still buy new ones made by hand.

What the tile is made of

A Maltese cement tile is not fired. It is pressed. GuideMeMalta describes three layers, laid into the mould in order and compressed together:

• Il-mastig — the face. Marble dust, white cement and pigment. Historically sea sand was used in place of marble dust. This is the layer that carries the pattern, and it is only a few millimetres thick.
• Il-putraxx — a middle layer of fine sand and black cement.
• Il-mirange — the back, coarser sand and black cement.

The tiles are 20 × 20 cm, pressed by hand and then placed in water. The Snop House gives the same process from the other end: cement, marble powder, natural pigments and sand, compacted in a hydraulic press, never fired, cured by air drying and immersion in water, with the pattern formed by a compartmented metal divider mould. The result has a matte finish, never a glaze.

Zanzi Homes names three of the maker's tools: il-plakka, the design mould; il-kwadru, the colour-setting tool; and it-tampun, the pressure plate.

Two things follow from this that matter more than anything else in the article. First, the pattern is a layer of coloured cement a few millimetres deep — it is not printed on and it is not infinitely deep either, so aggressive abrasion takes it off. Second, because the tile is cured rather than vitrified, FILA Solutions describes it as microporous and states that it must be sealed. An unsealed cement tile absorbs water, oil, wine and grout slurry. And because the binder is cement, acid dissolves it. This is the opposite of the ceramic and porcelain most arrivals from the UK are used to, where the glaze is chemically indifferent to almost anything in a kitchen cupboard.

Where they came from — the sources disagree

The Snop House gives a clean lineage: cement tiles originated in France around 1850, were shown at the 1867 Paris World's Fair, and reached Malta in the second half of the 19th century, where they became standard in townhouse corridors, reception rooms and staircases. GuideMeMalta's 2018 piece, by Kristina Cassar Dowling, instead claims an origin roughly 300 years ago with Ottoman roots.

These cannot both be right, and neither source shows its working. We present it as disputed. If you have been told your floor is "three hundred years old", treat that as a claim rather than a date. What is not in dispute is that corridors, reception rooms and staircases are where you find them, which is exactly where they are now at risk from renovation traffic.

Cleaning and sealing: what the technical guidance actually says

The only technical source here is FILA Solutions, an Italian manufacturer. It is a reference, not an endorsement — we are not naming or recommending their products. The sequence it sets out is:

1. Seal before grouting. Apply a water-repellent protector to the tile face before grouting, so that grout pigment cannot stain the porous surface. This applies to newly laid tiles and to old tiles being relaid.
2. Wash after laying with an alkaline detergent diluted 1:5, left on for 4–5 minutes, then rinsed.
3. Seal properly. A water-based sealer is walkable after 4 hours. A solvent-based sealer covers roughly 5–15 m² per litre, depending on how porous the tile is — on a thirsty old floor, assume the bottom of that range.
4. Maintain with a pH-neutral cleaner. Never acidic, never bleach-based.

That last line is the one to write on the wall. Limescale removers, descalers, toilet cleaners, most "heavy duty" bathroom sprays and anything advertised for cement residue will etch the face of a cement tile. So will bleach. The coverage figure is also worth noting if you are costing materials yourself: a long corridor of absorbent nineteenth-century tile consumes considerably more sealer per square metre than a modern floor.

Who still makes them

GuideMeMalta reports Malta Tiles Ltd, run by Robert Lia, with the company formed in 2017, continuing the work of Joe Camilleri, who retired around 2012. A separate GuideMeMalta article names Colombo in San Gwann and Hal Mann as makers producing handmade cement tiles in the traditional way. Zanzi Homes, writing as an estate agency, says few tile makers remain in Malta, and that existing traditional tiles can add value to a property because buyers appreciate them. The 2018 article also notes that reclaimed tiles carry extra appeal.

What none of the sources establishes is whether a workshop will press a run to match an existing pattern in your house, what the minimum order is, or the lead time. That is a phone call, not a published fact. If you are in Gozo, add a ferry crossing to every delivery of tiles and of sealer.

What this costs, and what nobody publishes

Our own rate card is a per-m²-of-tiled-surface model. The relevant band is Patterned / decorative: 55–92 € per m², made up of labour 30–42 € and tile 25–50 €. That band covers encaustic, hexagon and herringbone — it is a material choice, not a quality tier, and it is the band for laying new decorative tiles, including new handmade cement tiles.

Replacing individual cracked or lifted tiles has no published band on our card. It is quoted per tile, on site, because the variables — whether a matching tile exists, what is under the one that lifted, whether the neighbours come up with it — are not knowable from a photograph.

And there is no line at all for restoring an old floor: cleaning, stripping decades of wax, sealing, or lifting and relaying salvaged tiles. That is not an omission on our part alone. No Maltese restorer we could find publishes a price per m² for any of it. If you are getting quotes, expect bespoke figures and expect them to differ widely between contractors; there is no reference rate to anchor against, which also means there is no number to point to when one quote is three times another.

Two Maltese constraints worth knowing

There is no trade licence for tilers in Malta. Anyone can present as one. For a modern floor that is a quality risk; for an irreplaceable nineteenth-century floor it is a different order of risk, because the mistake is permanent. Ask what cleaner and what sealer the contractor intends to use, and whether the sealer goes on before grouting. Those two answers tell you most of what you need to know.

If the tiles are on a shared staircase, they are probably not yours alone. In a converted townhouse or a block, the common parts — the entrance hall and the stairs, which is precisely where the best tiles usually are — fall under the condominium rules in Cap. 398. Works there are a condominium decision, not an individual owner's.

Finally, a genuine blank: none of the sources opened says whether an original tiled floor enjoys any protection under planning or heritage rules, or whether stripping one out of a scheduled property or an urban conservation area requires permission. If your property is scheduled or in a UCA, that question is worth putting to the planning authority before anything is lifted — we cannot answer it from what is published.