Country: Italy
Region: Sicily
Time of visit: June 2021
Suggest duration: from one to two days
My rating: 7/10
After a day spent dedicating more time than necessary to the "three Aci" my inner voice began throwing reproaches to me: "Ragusa Ibla, Modica, Scicli, Ispica, Caltagirone, Donnafugata, Piazza Armerina ... do you have any idea how many places are there to see ?? And you spend a whole day to see 3 (or rather 2) villages and even take the luxury of spending the afternoon beached like a whale ??".
I began to feel uncomfortable and to think that I was wasting this opportunity to visit Sicily to indulge in idleness. The next day was then devoted to a mad rush to mark the stages in my traveler's notebook and make up for lost time.
9 AM - Ragusa Ibla
Ragusa Ibla. Baroque. Everyone says it'is beautiful. This is the set for many scenes of Commissario Montalbano (it's been 10 years since I last watched tv, but that's okay). All very clean and tidy for tourists. Maybe even too clean, after Catania it almost seems to be in 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 lively environment; the feeling is to experience the Renaissance palaces as an inhabitant of Florence in 1500 lived them; here everything is authentic, but there is a latent feeling of living in an open-air museum, there is a disconnect between history and current events. I don't know, something seems fake, perhaps because everything is too well cared for. Stop overthinking! The clock is ticking! It's late! Walk in the historic center. Baroque. So much Baroque. Bad lunch in a tourist trap. Anyway, Ragusa Ibla: two thumbs up! Ok, done, next on.
2.30 PM Modica
It's late. It's late. Hurry up. So many places to see, so little time. Damn, I didn't have to waste so much time in the three ACIs. Cathedral of San Giorgio. Baroque. So much Baroque. Walk in the historic center. Some nice views from above. Sometimes it seems that sicilians just can't help it: you have a nice historical village? You need to spoil it with some concrete buildings here and there. Chocolate museum (in Modica there is an ancient tradition of production of a particular type of chocolate; the production method ensures that the sugar crystals do not dissolve in the chocolate, giving it a crunchy texture different from the common chocolate bars produced anywhere else) chocolate statues, chocolate-based portraits of Pink Floyd (really?!). Purchase a few pounds of chocolate. Kids, you cannot 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. I'm starting to get a sense of deja vu; hadn't I already seen this Baroque cathedral this morning? Ok, done, next on.
6 PM Scicli
Yet another scenic stone village. The van of a sandwich maker ("u 'paninazzu", the badass sandwich) at the entrance of the town states the Sicilian way of life philosophy: "Mangia, bevi e futtatinni": eat, live and give no fuck). Walk through the streets. Some nice views from the top. Usual care for the historical heritage: the garbage bags next to the dilapidated church look like an installation from the Venice Biennale. Haven't I seen this baroque cathedral before? A local elder entertains us in a chat in strict Sicilian dialect; I sense that real estate prices have skyrocketed since they made a film (perhaps it refers to Montalbano) and that he disapproves it. Top-notch granita (Nivera, Via Penna 14). Come on, come on, it's late! Anyway, Scicli, so nice!
Allow me a little glottological digression: I would like to be able to pass on the peculiarities of the Sicilian language to non-native Italians. In particular, toponymy has a particular charm and sound. Let's take the name Scicli: any Italian, hearing the sound of the word, even not knowing its location, will immediately think that it is a Sicilian town. First, how do you pronounce it? In Sicily life is slow, and this is also expressed in the pronunciations; all the vowels are doubled, as if to transmit the echo of a sound lingering on in time. If you want to pronounce "Scicli" like a Sicilian, you have to say "Sciicli". The initial "sh" sound reminds me of the word "scirocco", the warm wind from the south that channels itself into the gorges of the Val di Noto and evokes the heat of the scorching Sicilian summer days. The tongue caresses the palate to pronounce it, as if tasting the creaminess of a granita. But the sweet sound "sh" is immediately followed by the scratchy "cli", which abruptly truncates the word in a dissonant way with a palatal-dental diphthong unusual for the Italian language. Many city names in Sicily have exotic sounds that reflect the legacy left by centuries of Greek, Arab, Norman occupation and contribute to the charm of Sicily.
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: pictures from a previous trip to Noto. Baroque! So much Baroque!
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