Giovanni Paolo Lascaris

Lippija Tower, the first of the Lascaris towers

The following year, Lascaris commissioned a series of towers as fortifications around the island of Malta,[1] now known as the Lascaris towers. The towers were designed and built by papal military architect, Vincenzo Maculani.[2] Lascaris Battery was named in his honor.

Martin de Redin, who succeeded Lascaris as Grand Master of the Order, commissioned further towers and the combined collection of fortifications is often referred to as the De Redin towers.

In 1639, Lascaris implemented a ban on women wearing masks or attending masked balls during carnivale. The ban was unpopular and locals blamed Lascaris' Jesuit confessor, Father Cassia. They took to the streets to poke fun at the Jesuits and Lascaris had one of the instigators arrested. A Jesuit college was ransacked as retaliation and those responsible demanded that Lascaris banish the Jesuit order from Malta, which he did for a short time while tensions abated. The incident is still remembered today as Lascaris' ban.[3]

The common Maltese idiom "wiċċ Laskri" (lit. face of Lascaris) is used when describing a sad or frustrated person.[4]

Giuseppe Caloriti's View of Valletta and the Three Cities with the galleon "Lascara" (named in honour of Lascaris) entering the harbour of Malta's capital, Valletta.

Also in 1639, Pope Urban VIII asked Lascaris to intervene in the First War of Castro by sending naval forces owned by the order to assist papal troops against the Dukes of Parma; specifically galleons and other warships. But the Dukes of Parma, as well as the Duchy of Venice, the Duchy of Florence and Duchy of Modena (who were allied with them), appealed to Lascaris not to provide the pope with support.[5]

Lascaris played a dangerous double game; he sent warships to aid the pope while assuring the Dukes they were there only as a show of force and would not participate in the conflict. Sure enough, conflict was limited to on-land skirmishes and Lascaris' troops never fired a single shot.

In 1651, the Knights, with Lascaris's approval, bought the island of Saint-Christophe, along with the dependent islands of Saint Croix, Saint Barthélemy, and Saint Martin, from the failing Compagnie des Îles de l'Amérique.[6] The Knights' ambassador to the French court, Jacques de Souvré, signed the agreement.[7] The Order's proprietary rights were confirmed in a treaty with France two years later: while the king would remain sovereign, the Knights would have complete temporal and spiritual jurisdiction on their islands. The only limits to their rule were that they could only send French knights to govern the islands, and upon the accession of each new King of France they were to provide a gold crown worth 1,000 écus.[8] In 1665, after Lascaris's death, the Knights sold their islands back to France, ending their brief colonial project.

In October 1652 Pope Innocent X closed a number of monasteries including one on Gozo. However, it was opened again after just four months thanks to intervention from Lascaris who was close to the monks of the order. A portrait of Lascaris still hangs in the monastery today.