Noto

A city rebuilt all at once

On 11 January 1693 an earthquake of an estimated magnitude around 7.4 destroyed south-eastern Sicily. Noto — the old one, ten kilometres further up on a hill — was levelled. Instead of rebuilding where it stood, they moved it: they took a gentle slope facing the Asinaro valley and drew a new city on it, from nothing, all at once.

That is what makes Noto unlike any other baroque centre: it is not an ancient city with baroque churches inside it, but a city designed entirely within a single architectural season, by a group of architects working together — Rosario Gagliardi above all — with the same vocabulary and the same stone. The stone is a soft local limestone that turns gold in the six o'clock sun, and it gave Noto the name everyone uses: the capital of Sicilian baroque. Since 2002 it has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site along with the seven other late-baroque towns of the Val di Noto.

How the town is laid out

The plan is simple and deliberately theatrical: three parallel axes follow the contour lines, and the central one — Corso Vittorio Emanuele — crosses three squares in a row, each with its church staged like a backdrop. Walking the corso end to end takes you from one reveal to the next, which is exactly the effect the architects wanted.

The Cathedral of San Nicolò stands at the top of an enormously wide staircase that is, to all intents, an auditorium. It collapsed in 1996 — the dome gave way one night in March — and reopened in 2007 after eleven years of rebuilding. Facing it, Palazzo Ducezio is the town hall. A little further on, Palazzo Nicolaci di Villadorata has the six most photographed balconies in Sicily: corbels carved with lions, sirens, horses, hippogriffs and grotesque faces, every one different. The church of San Domenico, with its convex facade, closes the third square.

In the upper quarter, beyond the corso, the town becomes poorer and truer: lanes, washing hung out, and every so often a church nobody visits. The bell-tower terraces — San Carlo can be climbed — give the view that makes the plan legible: roofs all of the same stone, and the olive valley behind.

What makes Noto different

Coherence. You see all of it in half a day, and precisely because it is all of one moment you come away with a clear idea of what the baroque actually was — something that does not happen in Palermo or Catania, where the baroque is mixed into nine centuries of other things.

Then there is what surrounds it, which is half the reason to come. Half an hour north is Siracusa with Ortigia. A quarter of an hour south the Vendicari reserve begins: salt pans, flamingos on migration, an abandoned tuna fishery and beaches behind the dunes among the finest on the island. A little beyond lies Marzamemi, a fishing village with its square on the water. And an hour west, the rest of the Val di Noto — Modica, with its cold-worked chocolate made to a recipe that arrived from the Aztecs by way of Spain, and Ragusa Ibla. In May the Infiorata covers Via Corrado Nicolaci with mosaics made of petals, and it is the fullest weekend of the town's year.

Practical notes

Noto is small and entirely walkable, but the corso is on a slight incline and there are many staircases: comfortable shoes. Cars are left in the car parks just outside Porta Reale. Those arriving by air come through Catania Airport, roughly an hour and a quarter away; a private transfer is the simplest way to combine it with Siracusa in the same day.

The climate is the hottest and driest in Sicily: 11–17 °C in January, 17–25 °C in spring, 27–34 °C in July and August, with long mild autumns into November. The best light is late afternoon, when the stone turns gold: that is the hour to see Noto, not midday. In summer the centre at noon has no shade and no people, for good reason. Restaurants keep Italian hours, and the granite here — mulberry, almond — are among the best on the island.