Sitting at a café on one of Valletta’s main streets is a perfect opportunity to play the flaneur and enjoy a spot of people watching.
But as you watch the world go by you might notice an outlier in the crowd, a man who goes by the name of Citoyen Port and describes himself as a history bounder and a dandy.
With his cane in one hand and his trusty whippet Tina in the other, he is invariably dressed in Regency-era historical fashion. Think coattails with collars and cravats or riding breeches and frilled cuffs.
Although his “government name” is Andrea Portelli, the 35-year-old prefers to go by the alias Citoyen Port.
He chooses to be called Citoyen because it harks back to the days of the French Revolution, to rid themselves of these aristocratic pronouns of Monsieur or Madame... and, in the days of the revolution, everyone was called Citoyen, which means citizen in French.
It is an egalitarian pronoun for one and all. He chose the surname Port as a nod to his actual surname, Portelli.
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20 май 2024
