The Conservation Division is housed in the former British Naval Hospital, a key example of 19th Century colonial architecture. Situated in Kalkara, the hospital rises majestically on a very prominent site overlooking the Grand Harbour. The project was the joint effort of the Royal Engineers, the Admiralty and the Maltese Civil Artificers (Public Works). It originally encompassed the 17th Century Villa Bighi, acting as the central block, and two pairs of wings on either of its sides. The West and East Wings immediately flanking the central villa were built in the 1830s while the outermost wings, the Surgical Block overlooking Bighi Bay and the Infections Block overlooking the maritime city of Vittoriosa or Birgu, were erected at the very beginning of the 20th century. The austere Neo-classical style of this hospital complex accentuated its role as a symbol of British Naval power in the Mediterranean during the 19th century.

The name, 'Bighi', by which this site has become more familiarly known, derives from the surname of the Italian Knight of the Order of St John, Fra Giovanni Bichi, who paid the expenses for the construction of the villa (still standing) and its surrounding (no longer extant) gardens. However, about two generations later what was once an enclosed private estate fell under the ownership of the Order until the French Occupation in 1798. Following the brief French interlude, the Villa Bichi estate was taken over by the new British Civil Government that in September 1800 took over the administration of the Maltese Islands. In 1822, Villa Bichi or Bigay or Bighi - variants of the name as they appeared in 19th-century correspondence - was transferred to the Royal Navy after Nelson had earmarked it as the ideal place where the sick and injured could be looked after.

By 1824, two Maltese Periti (architects / mastermasons), Salvatore Xerri and Giuseppe Bonavia had submitted a report including details of estimates for its construction and the area earmarked for the expansion of the Naval hospital. By November 1829, construction works on Bighi had already commenced. Col. George Whitmore of the Royal Engineers was responsible for the designs of the hospital whose construction was initially in the hands of Salvatore Xerri as Capo Maestro (Master mason), and later continued by Gaetano Xerri due to the death of the former prior to the laying of the first stone in 1830.

The Conservation Division now actually occupies only a small part of the former hospital building complex, namely the East Wing and Surgical Block. The East Wing constitutes the offices and lecture rooms of the Institute of Conservation & Management of Cultural Heritage (ICMCH) and the Conservation Division, the Preventive Conservation Section, the Diagnostic Science Laboratories and the conservation studio of the Architectural Conservation Section. The Surgical Block, once the patient-ward component of the hospital, is now the 'conservation hospital' for the various works of art that the Conservation Division receives for treatment.

Prior to its conversion into the present Conservation Division, the Bighi premises, whose function as a hospital ceased in September 1970, was the Abram Gatt Boys' Trade School from 1977 up till 1999. Late in that year it became the Malta Centre for Restoration incorporating the academic arm, formerly known as the Institute for Conservation & Restoration Studies (ICRS). As of March 2005, following an announcement by Government back in November 2004, the Malta Centre for Restoration was officially absorbed by Heritage Malta.