Modica

Modica is a Baroque hill city in south-east Sicily, in the Province of Ragusa and the Val di Noto, set on the southern slopes of the Hyblaean Mountains. Its historic centre rises and drops across a canyon-like landscape of three valleys, with an upper town on a rocky plateau and a lower town gathered around the basin of two covered streams.

The city’s identity is older than its Baroque appearance suggests. The area was inhabited since prehistoric times, and Modica appears in historical memory under names such as Motyca and, during Arab rule, Mohac. Its later importance grew with the County of Modica, established as a feudal state in 1296 and assigned to Manfredi di Chiaramonte, a phase that helped give the city lasting political and architectural weight.

Much of the Modica seen today was shaped after the earthquake of 1693, when reconstruction gave it the late Baroque character now associated with the UNESCO context of the Val di Noto. Its distinctiveness lies in this layered, vertical cityscape, where ancient settlement, medieval power and post-earthquake Baroque form remain tightly bound to the same steep valleys and rock.