Modica is a not-to-be-missed gem, and one of the eight little towns that make up Sicily’s Baroque Triangle.
One of Sicily’s most beautiful Baroque towns
Modica is the setting for the successful Italian television police drama series Inspector Montalbano, based on the books of Sicilian writer Andrea Camilleri, and it is also famous for its chocolate. A forty-minute drive from the equally beautiful Baroque towns of Ragusa and Noto, Modica consists of an upper and a lower town. Standing on high ground at 300 metres asl in the Monti Iblei mountain range, it was an important trading centre in Medieval days, and today boasts fine late-Baroque architecture dating back to when it was rebuilt after the great 1693 earthquake.
Chocolate made from an Aztec recipe
The busy Corso Umberto high street in Modica Bassa, the lower town, is dotted with elegant 18th and 19th-century golden sandstone buildings, restaurants, cafés and chocolate shops. Modica’s famous grainy chocolate is claimed by locals to originate from an Aztec recipe brought back from Mexico by the Spanish conquistadors. One must-visit is to the Antica Dolceria Bonajuto, the oldest chocolate shop in Sicily. Narrow lanes, stairs and alleyways lead up the slopes on both sides of the Corso towards the opposite hillside into the upper part of the town. 
Two cathedrals and a cave church
Modica has two grand Baroque cathedrals. The Cathedral of St. Peter is on the Corso and was destroyed by two earthquakes and finally rebuilt in the 18th-century in Baroque style. Higher up towards the old town perches the Cathedral of St. George, the town's most eye-catching building with a grand façade rising into a curved central belltower. After the two grand cathedrals visitors should not miss the charming Carmine Church with a Gothic doorway and a rose window, and the historic cave church of St. Nicholas Inferior. This has some 12th-century frescoes and there is an area where a natural spring once flowed into a large pool that was used for baptisms.
The house of the poet Salvatore Quasimodo
Corso Regina Margherita, the street leading to the upper town is lined with old palaces, many of them crumbling and the Castle of the Counts, with an 18th-century Clock Tower, overlooks the lower town from a rocky spur. The Civic Museum on the Corso Umberto has a collection of Greek and Roman ceramics as well as funeral artefacts from the Modica area, but the prize exhibit is a bronze statuette of Hercules in Hellenic style that probably dates back to the 3rd century B.C. Anyone interested in Italian poetry should visit the Quasimodo House, birthplace of the Italian poet Salvatore Quasimodo which is near the castle and now a museum.
For information: www.modica.it
