Ragusa Ibla, Scicli, Modica, Noto (Sicily). Travel notes.

Country: Italy

Region: Sicily

Time of visit: June 2021

Suggested duration: from one to two days

My rating: 7/10

I want to be upfront about how I visited these places: badly. After spending what my inner voice considered a criminally excessive amount of time with the three Aci and an afternoon beached like a whale, I woke up the next morning convinced I had to make up for lost time. What followed was a mad sprint through four UNESCO Baroque towns in a single day — Ragusa Ibla at 9am, Modica at 2:30pm, Scicli at 6pm, and Noto visited on a separate trip entirely. It was, to put it charitably, a suboptimal approach.

So take these notes for what they are: a first-contact impression, not a considered verdict. These places deserve considerably more time than I gave them, and I fully intend to return. That said, even a rushed visit to the Val di Noto is better than no visit at all.

This post is part of the southern Sicily tour I made in June 2021, which took me from Catania to Trapani via Etna, Ortigia, Marzamemi and Agrigento.

Planning a trip? Check available flights to Sicily here.

9 AM: Ragusa Ibla

Ragusa Ibla. Baroque. Everyone says it's beautiful. It's been the set for many scenes of Commissario Montalbano (it's been over a decade since I last watched TV, but that's beside the point). All very clean and tidy for tourists — perhaps too clean. Coming from Catania, with its volcanic chaos and its fish market that smells of the sea and barely restrained anarchy, Ragusa Ibla almost feels like a film set rather than a city. When you walk the streets of Florence you are overwhelmed by creativity and art but you are in a living environment; the feeling is to experience the Renaissance palaces as an inhabitant of 1500 lived them. Here everything is authentic, but there is a latent feeling of an open-air museum — a disconnect between history and current events. Everything is too well preserved, too presentable. I don't entirely trust places that look this good.

Stop overthinking. The clock is ticking.

Among the Baroque towns of the Val di Noto, Ragusa Ibla is probably the most dramatic from an urbanistic point of view. The old town clings to the slopes of a limestone hill and develops vertically along a labyrinth of staircases, narrow alleys and terraces. Unlike Noto, which was largely planned according to rational principles after the earthquake, Ragusa evolved in a more organic way, preserving the irregular structure of a medieval town beneath its Baroque overlay.

Its architectural climax is the Cathedral of San Giorgio, designed by Rosario Gagliardi, one of the key figures of Sicilian Baroque. The church dominates the city with a monumental façade and a spectacular staircase that transforms the square in front of it into a kind of urban stage set. Standing there, it becomes clear that Sicilian Baroque is not only about decoration: it is about urban theatre.

Bad lunch in a tourist trap. Two thumbs up for the rest of it. Next on.

2:30 PM: Modica

It's late. So many places, so little time.

Modica is built along a narrow valley, which forces the town to develop in geological layers. The result is one of the most striking visual compositions in Sicily: houses, palaces and churches seem stacked one above the other, following the contours of the hills. The monumental Church of San Giorgio — yes, another one, Gagliardi was busy — rises above the city like a Baroque crown, accessible through a long staircase that does exactly what Sicilian Baroque staircases are supposed to do.

Modica is also famous for its chocolate: an ancient production tradition that uses a cold-processing method inherited from pre-Columbian Mesoamerica via the Spanish, which ensures that the sugar crystals don't dissolve, giving the chocolate a crunchy, almost grainy texture entirely different from anything you'll find elsewhere. There is a chocolate museum. There are chocolate statues. There is, I am not making this up, a chocolate portrait of Pink Floyd. I bought several pounds of chocolate and told the children they could not touch the statues, let alone eat them.

Memo to myself: next time, skip the chocolate museum and spend more time wandering the streets of the town.

Anyway — Modica. Very good. Next on.

6 PM: Scicli

Yet another scenic stone village perched on a hill. But Scicli has something the others don't, at least in spirit. The van of a sandwich maker at the entrance of the town — "u 'paninazzu", the badass sandwich — carries a sign summarising the local philosophy of life: "Mangia, bevi e futtatinni". Eat, drink, and give no fucks. A programme I fully endorse.

Among the Baroque towns of the Val di Noto, Scicli feels the most relaxed and the least curated for consumption. The elegant Via Francesco Mormino Penna, lined with Baroque palaces and churches, forms one of the most refined urban sequences in the region. At the end of the street stands Palazzo Beneventano, famous for its grotesque masks and elaborate stone carvings — a small masterpiece of Sicilian Baroque imagination that rewards close looking.

Some nice views from the top. The garbage bags next to the dilapidated church at the end of one alley look like an installation from the Venice Biennale, but I mean this in the most affectionate possible way. Not everything here is perfectly restored. That, strangely, makes it more alive.

A local elder entertained us in strict Sicilian dialect. I gathered that real estate prices had skyrocketed since they filmed Montalbano here, and that he disapproved.

Top-notch granita at Nivera, Via Penna 14. Mandatory stop.

A Brief Digression on Sicilian Toponymy (Bear with Me)

I would like to be able to pass on the peculiarities of the Sicilian language to non-native Italians, because it is genuinely one of the pleasures of travelling here.

Take the name Scicli: any Italian, hearing it for the first time, will immediately know it is a Sicilian town. In Sicily, life is slow, and this is expressed even in pronunciation; all the vowels are doubled, as if to transmit the echo of a sound lingering in time. If you want to pronounce "Scicli" like a Sicilian, you say "Sciicli". The initial "sh" sound evokes the word scirocco, the warm wind from the south that channels itself into the gorges of the Val di Noto and carries the heat of Sicilian summer. The tongue caresses the palate to pronounce it, like tasting the creaminess of a granita. But the sweet "sh" is immediately followed by the scratchy "cli", which abruptly truncates the word in a dissonant way, with a palatal-dental diphthong unusual for Italian.

Many place names in Sicily carry the same exotic layering: Marzamemi, Alcantara, Agrigento — Arabic, Greek and Norman strata compressed into a few syllables. Decades of occupations, each leaving a sound behind.

The sun begins to set and the goal of recovering time in a tour de force of the Val di Noto manifests itself in all its stupidity. It will be necessary to return more calmly, resuming the journey from where I left it. There's still too many places to see and so many clones of Baroque cathedrals (Militello, Caltagirone, Palazzolo Acreide, Donnafugata, Piazza Armerina, Ispica...).

A small final consideration: I have not studied in depth the Baroque movement; it may be that I do not have the adequate analysis tools and that my evaluation is superficial; in any case I find Sicilian Baroque architecture very redundant and repetitive; unlike the Roman Baroque, which has been able to combine the abundance of forms with a variety of expressive means, the Sicilian Baroque seems to me to infinitely replicate (like the echo of trailing vowels) the same architectural modules made of curved facades broken by couples or triples of columns. The visit to the Val di Noto left me with mixed feelings, between the amazement for the scenographic extravagance and the bulimic satiety due to excess and repetitiveness.

Bonus Track: Noto

Noto was visited on a separate trip and deserves its own note, because it is genuinely different from the other three.

If Ragusa feels organic and Modica dramatic, Noto is something else entirely: a Baroque city designed almost like an architectural manifesto. After the 1693 earthquake, the original medieval settlement was abandoned and a completely new town was built a few kilometres away, following rational urban principles — straight streets, axial perspectives, carefully planned visual alignments.

Walking along Corso Vittorio Emanuele, the main axis of the city, one encounters a sequence of churches, palaces and terraces carved in warm honey-coloured limestone. In the late afternoon light the stone turns almost golden, creating the illusion of a city sculpted out of sunlight.

It is the most coherent expression of Sicilian Baroque, and the one most likely to make you feel you are walking through a stage set. Whether that is a criticism or a compliment depends entirely on your mood.

Some Information — Like in a Proper Travel Blog

Why the Val di Noto Looks the Way It Does

What many visitors don't realise is that the extraordinary concentration of Baroque towns in south-eastern Sicily is the direct consequence of a catastrophe.

In January 1693, one of the most violent earthquakes in European history devastated large parts of eastern Sicily. Entire cities were destroyed and tens of thousands of people died. The reconstruction that followed was not simply a process of rebuilding houses: it became a vast architectural experiment.

Cities such as Noto, Ragusa, Modica and Scicli were either rebuilt from scratch or radically redesigned. Architects and local elites took the opportunity to rethink the urban landscape entirely, introducing wide streets, theatrical squares and churches designed to dominate the skyline. The result is what today we call Sicilian Baroque: a style exuberant, scenographic and often deliberately excessive, perfectly suited to a society eager to demonstrate resilience and power after a disaster. In 2002 this unique ensemble was recognised by UNESCO as the Late Baroque Towns of the Val di Noto.

Worth keeping in mind: this is an architecture born from trauma and ambition in equal measure, not simply from aesthetic preference. It shows.

Ragusa Ibla: A Vertical City

Among the towns of the Val di Noto, Ragusa Ibla is probably the most dramatic from an urbanistic point of view.

The old town clings to the slopes of a limestone hill and develops vertically along a labyrinth of staircases, narrow alleys and terraces. Unlike Noto, which was largely planned according to rational principles after the earthquake, Ragusa evolved in a more organic way, preserving the irregular structure of a medieval town.

Its architectural climax is the Cathedral of San Giorgio, designed by the architect Rosario Gagliardi, one of the key figures of Sicilian Baroque. The church dominates the city with a monumental façade and a spectacular staircase that transforms the square into a kind of urban stage set.

Standing there, it becomes clear that Sicilian Baroque is not only about decoration: it is also about urban theatre.

Modica and Scicli: Two Variations on the Same Theme

At first glance Modica and Scicli might appear similar, but their urban character is quite different.

Modica is built along a narrow valley that forces the town to develop in layers. The result is a striking visual composition: houses, palaces and churches seem stacked one above the other, following the contours of the hills. The monumental Church of San Giorgio rises above the city like a baroque crown, accessible through a long staircase that reinforces its scenographic impact.

Scicli, on the other hand, feels more open and harmonious. The elegant Via Francesco Mormino Penna, lined with baroque palaces and churches, forms one of the most refined urban sequences in Sicily. At the end of the street stands Palazzo Beneventano, famous for its grotesque masks and elaborate stone carvings, a masterpiece of Sicilian baroque imagination.

Both towns illustrate how a relatively limited architectural vocabulary could still generate remarkably different urban experiences.

Noto: The “Perfect” Baroque City

If Ragusa feels organic and Modica dramatic, Noto is something else entirely: a baroque city designed almost like an architectural manifesto.

After the earthquake the original medieval settlement was abandoned and a completely new town was built a few kilometres away. The new Noto followed rational urban principles: straight streets, axial perspectives and carefully planned visual alignments.

Walking along Corso Vittorio Emanuele, the main axis of the city, one encounters a sequence of churches, palaces and terraces carved in warm honey-coloured limestone. In the late afternoon light the stone turns almost golden, creating the illusion of a city sculpted out of sunlight.

It is perhaps the most coherent expression of Sicilian Baroque, and also the one that most easily gives the impression of being a perfectly preserved stage set.

How to Fit the Val di Noto into a Wider Sicily Itinerary

These four towns form the cultural backbone of south-eastern Sicily, but they make the most sense as part of a wider itinerary:

• Southern Sicily tour overview: the full route, from Catania to Trapani

• Catania: volcanic chaos, extraordinary street food, the best fish market in Sicily — the ideal starting point

• Mount Etna: you cannot come this close and not go up

• The three Aci: Acireale, Aci Trezza, Aci Castello: quieter coastal towns north of Catania, good for a slower day

• Ortigia, Syracuse: the ancient island with a cathedral built over a Greek temple, one of the most layered places in the Mediterranean

• Marzamemi: a fishing village turned elegant open-air restaurant; enchanting at sunset, best avoided in August

• Agrigento, Selinunte, Segesta: the Greek temples of the south-west, a completely different register from the Baroque of the south-east

• Mazara del Vallo: perhaps the most unexpected place on the whole tour

My honest recommendation: divide the Val di Noto into at least two days and resist the temptation to do what I did. Four Baroque cathedrals in six hours is, technically, achievable. It is also a waste.

Practical Information

Getting there	By car from Catania (Ragusa: 110 km; Noto: 85 km; Modica: 95 km; Scicli: 100 km). Train connections exist but are slow and infrequent. A car is strongly recommended.
How long	Minimum two days for all four towns; three is better
Best time	April, May, September, October. July and August are very hot and crowded.
Parking	Available at the edge of each historic centre, usually paid in summer
Granita	Nivera, Via Penna 14, Scicli. Non-negotiable.
Chocolate	Buy it in Modica. Skip the museum if time is short.

Rent a car to explore the Val di Noto.