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A “miracle” of enterprise

Vittoria is a recently founded town, which came into being in 1607 at the behest of Vittoria Colonna, wife of the Count of Modica, Luis II Enriquez Cabrera. She decided to people a wooded area between the Ippari and Dirillo rivers, getting the inhabitants of neighbouring villages to come there by offering them various advantages. The varied provenance of the settlers and the need to found a place from scratch perhaps explain the enterprising spirit of the people of Vittoria, who in three centuries achieved an extraordinary overall development, mainly thanks to the agricultural economy, traditionally based on vine growing and on the industrial activities connected with it, though now there is up-tQ-date greenhouse production. Because of its modernity, Vittoria does not have many artistic monuments of great historic value. However, it stands out for its urban layout and for the variety of styles characterising some buildings. One should see, for example, the Renaissance style of the inner courtyard of Palazzo Pavia, the Gothic style of Palazzo Traina, based on some Venetian models, or the art nouveau sculptures in the facade of Palazzo Piazzese. In Piazza del Popolo there stands the municipal theatre, a splendid bijou in neo-classical style. The religious buildings date from the eighteenth century and reflect the models which were common in religious architecture in the lblei area.

The cathedral church, dedicated to St. John, patron saint of the town, in the elan of its facade recalls that of the Saviour in Noto, while the Santa Maria delle Grazie church reminds one very much, also in the facade, of the St. George churches at Ragusa and Modica. In Piazza Sei Martin della Libert~ there is a little glazed temple with a circular shape, commonly referred to as Calvario (Calvary): every year, in fact, at this place, on Good Friday, there is held the so-called Scesa dells croce (Descent from the cross), a sacred representation dating from the middle of the seventeenth century. A thing which has recently come into being in Vittoria is the Sicilian Cart Museum.

In 1692 in Vittoria, after authorisation by the Bishop of Syracuse, work began on reconstructing the cathedral church dedicated to St. John. The layout of the church followed the traditional basilica system with columns; work, as in the case of a lot of other big buildings in the Iblel area, went on for over a century.

There is some originality in the tower-shaped facade, with two little campaniles set back on the wings. Though sometimes referred to the sculptor Benedetto Cultraro da Chiaramonte (active in the first decades of the eighteenth century), the portals of the facade conserve imagery and decoration which have suggested the use of material recovered after the 1693 earthquake. This hypothesis is backed up by the fact that the two side portals are not placed centrally.

Testi © Azienda Autonoma Provinciale per l'Incremento Turistico di Ragusa
Via Capitano Bocchieri, 33 - 97100 RAGUSA
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Foto © Studio Scivoletto