Al 3 of these towns are UNESCO heritage sites; they are part of a total of 8 towns in southeastern Sicily that were rebuilt or repaired in the late baroque style after a devastating earthquake in 1693.
These towns are less than a 40 minute drive from Marina di Modica, which is where we were staying. So they're perfect for day trips. Each town has something unique and impressive about it and I'm not sure I could choose just one to visit if I had to.
A side note about the driving ... if you can avoid driving in Sicily, that's the ideal situation. However we rented a car (unfortunately Europcar gave us a Jeep SUV - make sure you get something smaller!) and even with a built-in GPS, our GPS from home, and 2 iphones running google maps, we still had some interesting times finding routes. Some of the roads in Sicily just aren't well documented by navigation companies. You'll be fine if you stick to the main highways - driving from Catania to Syracuse to Marina di Modica was totally fine with no issues. Once you get on the smaller back roads things get narrow, unlit, windy, poorly signed, and extremely bumpy - if you were lucky enough to be driving on pavement in the first place. And there are no laws on the roads - people run red lights, go any way they want down one-way streets, sit in the middle of intersections, double and triple park anywhere they want, drive either way above or way below the limit. Anything goes! It's total chaos you just have to embrace it. It's nothing short of a miracle we didn't damage our car or kill somebody on a moped.
Modica
Okay, first stop was Modica - known for its chocolate so I was looking forward to this stop. The chocolate in Modica has a unique consistency and is actually very grainy so it's more like you're eating kind of a cookie. I really like it. So we stocked up on some of that. Modica is also built between and up several large hills with a nice church on top of one so we had ourselves a nice uphill hike here. Here are some streets around town.
Starting the steps up to the church:
The view from the church, you kind of look across the valley to the other hill.
Some more fun streets. You get a great view from the top of the hill. There's also a castle up there but not really much to see inside it it's just kind of an empty building but they let you wander around.
A pano of the view:
Some views from the castle (which is right by the church):
After our little walk and some chocolate buying we went in search of lunch. Found some cats first. There weren't very many cats hanging around, to my dismay. I would totally be the person that put out bowls of food and water for the street cats though.
We ate lunch at Cappero Bistrot. I highly recommend going there. The food was unique and delicious - I had spaghettone in an almond sauce with chives on it. All the food is locally sourced and really fresh and the waiter/owner tells you where everything is from. Here's a picture of our little table in the courtyard. There are maybe only 4 tables in the courtyard and a few more inside the restaurant.
Ragusa
The next day, we headed out to Ragusa. It was rainy but we still enjoyed a wander around the winding streets there. Ragusa-ibla, where we were, is where the old part of town is with the winding streets and touristy shops. It also has a little park at one end, shown below.
In Ragusa, we parked at the bottom of town and walked up into it. It's not a long walk, maybe 10-15 minutes. You can't walk anywhere in Ragusa-ibla without going either up or down hill so prepare yourself for that. You really have to park at the bottom of the hill because trying to drive around the streets up the hill seems like something better left to the locals, in my opinion. There is a nice little pedestrian area right around the Duomo here and of course many cute, narrow, windy streets.
Here's the church. You do have to walk up about 100 steps to get to the entrance.
And some fun streets we saw while wandering around. The first one is part of the pedestrian-only strip leading up to the church.
I love how these people filled their little courtyard/alley with plants. It was gloomy and rainy and the picture doesn't do it justice but it was really cute.
Some neat views of the town and how it's situated at the top of a hill. The modern part of the town is separate from this part by a gorge.
And ... cats! Look at the two sleeping on each other. The person who lives here has left out food for them ... this would be my house if I lived here.
We ate lunch at a place called MAD, which stands for Magazzini Donnafugata. Honestly the food was good but not remarkable. I'm sure there are better places to stop in Ragusa. We chose this place because it was already after 2pm, which is the witching hour when many restaurants close until 7 or 8 pm, but this place was still open.
We then drove another 20 minutes north to do a tour and tasting at an olive oil factory, Oleificio Gulino. This was really neat, and their olive oil was quite tasty. Below you can see an olive tree (duh) and on the right is the olive oil right after it's been pressed out of the olives. It's super green. Below that are pictures of the inside and outside of the building where all this magic was happening, respectively. We stocked up on some of their products afterwards and I think you might be able to buy their oil online and have it shipped to you as well.
Noto
It seems to me that Noto is the most famous of the baroque towns, yet I found it the most touristy and least impressive. The buildings are beautiful, don't get me wrong. Maybe it was just that the streets were on a sort of grid and there was no dramatic hill. We only stopped here to stretch our legs on our drive to our next hotel in northern Sicily and so only took a few pictures along the main drag. The church is impressive - there are actually something like 50 churches in Noto so you could spend several days just exploring those. You can climb to the top of many of them too.
Some street pics. The first is of the main drag that the church is on - which is very nicely pedestrian-only - the rest are side or parallel streets to the main street. We didn't venture too far here.
We ate lunch at a place called Picnic. It was a bit of a breath of fresh air - salads, smoothies, vegetarian dishes - avocado! Lighter fare than pizza and pasta for sure, which was in line with our goal for the day: to be hungry for dinner at a reasonable hour.
And that wraps up our tour of the baroque towns. All worth a visit, if you have the time.
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