Scicli

Scicli is a historic Late Baroque town in south-eastern Sicily, in the Val di Noto and the southern Monti Iblei. Its setting gives it much of its character: the town lies where three narrow valleys meet, held between rocky slopes and ravines before the land opens into a plain running toward the Mediterranean. This close relationship between stone, hillside and sea gives Scicli a compact, dramatic urban presence.

Its identity reaches back far beyond its Baroque appearance. The name is sometimes connected with *Siclis* and the ancient Siculi, while under Arab rule the settlement was known as *Sikla*; its history also carries Sicel, Greek, Roman, Byzantine, Arab and Norman layers. The decisive visual chapter came after the 1693 Val di Noto earthquake, when Scicli was rebuilt in the late Sicilian Baroque style that later helped earn it UNESCO World Heritage status.

Today Scicli is distinctive for the way this Baroque reconstruction sits inside a much older, rougher landscape, with memories of early hill settlement and cave quarters still part of its story. It is this meeting of valley topography, layered history and southern Sicilian stone that defines the town.