What are the Gibraltar Law Courts and Supreme Court building on Main Street?
Short answer
The Gibraltar Law Courts at 277 Main Street are the home of the Supreme Court of Gibraltar. The main building dates from 1820 and stands behind a garden laid out on the site of the old courthouse; a royal charter of 1830 created the Supreme Court and much of the court system still in use.
Detailed answer
In the eighteenth century this site held the courtroom and house of the Judge Advocate, with his garden running back towards Town Range. In 1820 a new courthouse was built in that garden, behind the old court. When it was finished, the old courthouse and two neighbouring properties were pulled down and the ground was laid out as the garden that now opens the court's front to Main Street.
Gibraltar's first civil court was created by royal letters patent in 1720, and a series of Charters of Justice followed. The Fifth Charter of Justice, by letters patent dated Wednesday 1 September 1830, created the Supreme Court by bringing the earlier courts together. It set up many features of the court system still in place today, including the independence of the judges, the Supreme Court itself and appeals to the Privy Council. All of Gibraltar's courts were then housed in the 1820 building.
The building was restored and extended in 1886. The garden was redesigned by the Italian landscape artist Giuseppe Codali, who also landscaped the Alameda Gardens, and the grounds were fully restored again in the late 1980s.
A large modern extension was added on the Town Range side, and the enlarged Law Courts reopened in March 2011. The complex now holds seven courts: four Supreme Court courtrooms, two magistrates' courts and a coroner's court. Excavations for the extension in 2009 found three skeletons from the early fourteenth century, which suggest the area may once have been a Moorish burial ground.
Gibraltar's courts also heard the case of the Mary Celeste, the American ship found drifting with nobody on board in December 1872. She was sailed into Gibraltar, and the salvage claim was heard by Gibraltar's Vice-Admiralty Court.
The Law Courts are a working court building. The garden and the 1820 façade face Main Street.