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Ragusa provinces strikes one on account of its connotations of antiquity and the peculiarity of places in it. And one is amazed by the fact that the province was only set up in 1926. Actually, the twelve comunes that constitute its territory and that previously came under Modica ... [continue] |
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MARINA DI RAGUSA MODICA PUNTA SECCA RAGUSA / RAGUSA IBLA SANTA CROCE CAMERINA SCICLI / DONNALUCATA SCOGLITTI ________________________ Association B&B Province of Ragusa
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Modica stands on some rock ridges which, like spurs, cut into a big Y¬shaped gully along the lanni Mauro and Pozzo dei Pruni torrents. its origins are ancient, and Modica was inhabited by the Sicull and then by the Greeks and later subjugated by the Romans. It is mentioned by Cicero among the Sicilian towns which were victims of Verres’ vexations. After the Byzantine and Arab dominations, it enjoyed its greatest splendour in the long period from the Middle Ages to the modern age, during which it became a county. From the Aragonese, the county of Modica went for about a century to the Chiaramontes and then to the Cabreras. The wealth of the county and the power of its seigneurs were such that Modica could compete with the royal authority and ended up consti¬tuting almost a kingdom within the kingdom.
Over the centuries the history of the town was built up around its economy, which is still quite prosperous today. One need only think of the agriculture of the whole Modica area and the rural architecture of its countless farms and the variegated network of its renowned dry-stone walls, Among the main monuments, we must mention the San Giorgio church, which was done, at least in the present form, by Roaario Gagliardi, who re-designed it after it was destroyed in the 1693 earthquake; the church is enriched by a
flight of 250 steps, accentuating the scenic effect of the fine facade; in addition to the stuccoes, statues and paintings of value inside it, the church contains, traced out on the floor, a sundial, and it also houses priceless sacred treasure, including the holy silver ark containing some relics of St. George. Another monumental church is San Pietro, which also has a very big flight of steps; inside it there is a Trapani Madonna by the Gagini school and a relic of St. Peter, patron saint of the town. We must also mention the Carmine, San Giovanni, Rosario and Santa Maria di Betlem churches; in the latter there is a fine crib from Caltagirone, done in 18B2 - the Bongiovanni-Vaccaro and Azzolina workshop did the statuettes, while Father Benedetto Papale did the scenery.
The Corso or “main road” in Modica, a town which has a vast historic part, has a centuries-old history. The organi¬sation of a street which flanked the edges of the torrents and, crossing bridges, connected the centre - which was dominated by the castle - to the outer districts, was defined in the first half of the seventeenth century. If was the majestic convents and monasteries of the reformed religious orders that traced out the new artery, which gradually became the place representing the town. From the Counter-Reformation to the Baroque and then to the bourgeois town of the first half of the nineteenth century (a period in which people thought about “redesigning” street fronts and bridges, while a “cafe” and the municipal theatre were set up), the Corso has constituted a privileged meeting place in a rooted urban dimension, recorded by travellers and leading to improvement work consisting in covering riverbeds in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
