According to the Australian architect Harry Seidler, the Baroque was one of the high points of Western architecture. Ragusa takes us back to that age like a time capsule, to exuberant façades where architecture and sculpture become one.
Architecturally speaking, Sicily could almost be divided into regions. Palermo and its surroundings are shaped by Arab-Norman art, Agrigento has its Greek temples, while the entire south-east is something of a Baroque treasure trove. And by treasure trove, I don’t mean the odd church or palace. I mean entire towns built in the Baroque style. This was not, however, the result of some grand artistic vision conceived in advance. The explanation was much simpler. And considerably more catastrophic.
In 1693, south-eastern Sicily was struck by an earthquake. And what an earthquake it was. The destruction was so extensive that in many towns there was hardly anything left to restore. They had to be built almost from scratch. Some, Noto among them, were rebuilt on entirely new sites. Ragusa couldn’t quite make up its mind, so it did both: restored the old town and built a new one on a nearby hill. There were no heritage authorities of the kind we have today. If a palace had been Gothic or Renaissance before the earthquake, there was no particular reason for it to look the same afterwards. People built in the style of the day, and at that point the Baroque ruled the architectural world.
Ragusa is so thoroughly Baroque that you might be forgiven for thinking nothing had existed there before it. That, however, could hardly be further from the truth. People had been living in the Ragusa area for several millennia, and the town’s history had been eventful long before the earthquake almost wiped it off the map.
The rebuilding produced something rather unusual. Ragusa ended up with two town centres, two principal churches and two groups of residents who did not get on particularly well. The quarrel went so far that there were eventually two separate municipalities, each with its own mayor. Perhaps it was simply that familiar Mediterranean rivalry between neighbours, only on the scale of an entire town. At least nobody could complain of being bored.
When a Donkey Finds Its Way onto My Plate
It was one of those days when my sightseeing ambitions got a little out of hand. I’d spent the morning among the temples of Agrigento, driven 150 kilometres to Scicli, lingered for a while in the company of Inspector Montalbano, driven another half-hour to Modica, searched unsuccessfully for some of its famous local chocolate, and then driven half an hour more to Ragusa. The next thirty minutes went on finding my hotel, which proved unexpectedly difficult despite satellite navigation and the hotel’s very detailed directions. The hotel, it seemed, had a rather liberal interpretation of distances and of its own location, generally to its advantage. Somewhere in all this I had forgotten something that, in my case, is almost inconceivable. I’d forgotten to eat.
So when I finally arrived, I skipped unpacking, getting acquainted with the building and every other formality and went straight to reception to ask where I could get a decent meal. The receptionist spoke English, but with a rather distinctive accent and not quite fluently enough for an extended conversation. My very modest Italian was no great help, but somehow we managed. She recommended a restaurant called Cucina e Vino. She also mentioned a donkey, and in my head the place promptly became a restaurant called the Happy Donkey, complete with a functioning kitchen and a respectable wine list. For someone who hadn’t eaten all day, that was more than enough information. Off I went on my gastronomic tour of Ragusa.
I found the restaurant without much trouble. I could hardly have missed it: a donkey had pride of place on the sign above the door. To me, it was still the Happy Donkey. A few minutes later, I realised the donkey was neither happy nor, strictly speaking, alive, and that a substantial part of its physical presence had migrated onto the menu. I admit I was not entirely comfortable with this. Donkey meat had never featured on my gastronomic wish list, and for a moment I seriously considered leaving. But before I could make a decision, an explanation followed that I simply have to recount.
The waiter’s English was largely confined to two words: donkey and pasta. Everything else he made up for with gestures and lengthy explanations in Italian. This was 30 December 2019, when voice translation between Croatian and Italian — especially with a Sicilian dialect thrown in — could still produce some rather curious results. So we relied on more traditional forms of communication. I had already worked out what had happened to the donkey, but the waiter evidently wasn’t convinced I understood. Saying donkey, he drew his hand across his own throat, leaving little doubt about the animal’s fate, then pointed at the plate to make absolutely sure I understood where it had ended up. I imagine he had heard every possible question over the years and developed a method of explanation that left very little room for follow-up questions.
After such a thorough explanation, I could either leave or order the donkey. And having come this far, why not? Surely a donkey couldn’t be that inedible. Admittedly, that was my empty stomach speaking rather than any more sensible part of me. The decision was made. Donkey it would be. But there was still a proper order to follow. An Italian dinner has its rituals as far as I’m concerned: antipasti, primo, secondo and dolce. Granted, I tend to overestimate my capacity and often stop at the primo, but that has never prevented me from setting out with the same ambitions next time.
An amuse-bouche of courgettes in olive oil arrived with homemade bread. Nothing spectacular, but delicious in its simplicity. The emphasis was clearly on the quality of the ingredients, not on making their preparation unnecessarily complicated. For a starter I had traditional Sicilian caponata with local cheese, followed by the star of the evening: pasta with donkey ragù. Despite all the earlier explanations, I needed a moment to summon the courage for my first mouthful. In the end, the donkey turned out to be rather tasty. Very tasty, in fact. Next came a cheese soufflé with fig jam, and finally almond ice cream drizzled with chocolate from Modica. So the chocolate I’d spent the afternoon unsuccessfully hunting down in Modica finally turned up in Ragusa. On top of my ice cream, admittedly. A local red wine accompanied the lot. All in all, an excellent dinner at a very reasonable price.
After dinner I returned to the hotel with barely enough energy left to go to bed. The next day’s plan was even more ambitious: see Ragusa and nearby Noto, drive to Catania, check into another hotel for three nights, return the car and see in the New Year.
A Hotel in Desperate Need of an Egg-Cooking Lesson
As for choosing hotels in Sicily, I had strayed a fair way from my usual habits. There weren’t Marriotts in every town on my Sicilian route, so I had to rely on Tripadvisor reviews and independent hotels. The results were mixed: some excellent, some less impressive, and some decidedly eccentric. The one in Ragusa belonged firmly in the last category. San Giorgio Palace sits in the old town, in a historic building that was once an aristocratic residence. Inside, it has been completely modernised, with everything a contemporary hotel ought to have. At first glance, at least.
My room, however, was not in the main building but in a small annexe, practically carved into the rock. At first I found the idea rather appealing, but when every trip to the lobby in the middle of winter involves putting on a coat, the charm begins to wear thin. There were a few little issues with insulation too, but at least I had slept in a cave. Nobody could accuse the hotel of lacking character.
My fondness for the hotel did not last long. To be precise, it lasted until breakfast, when the place lost almost all its character in my eyes.
By that point in December 2019, I was on my fifth night and fourth hotel in Sicily. I could write a chapter about each of the others, but they had one thing in common: a good breakfast. Not necessarily an extravagant one, just good quality and genuinely local. This hotel seemed to have forgotten that it was in Sicily. Nothing felt remotely local, and the food was so industrial that the whole buffet could have been transplanted into any average — or even below-average — Central European hotel without anyone noticing.
They even bought in frozen pancakes, as I discovered first-hand when the pancake delivery man and I found ourselves sharing a lift. Of course, I don’t expect every hotel to make absolutely everything it serves from scratch. But in Sicily, where food matters so much, this breakfast felt almost like a culinary insult.
And now for the best part.
They apparently tried to make amends by offering eggs cooked to order. Almost every imaginable preparation was on the menu, from omelettes and scrambled eggs to fried eggs and my personal favourite, poached eggs, which I ordered with considerable enthusiasm. What arrived was a pair of fried eggs.
The waitress, however, was determined to convince me that they were poached, and that any resemblance to fried eggs was purely coincidental. When I remained unconvinced, she took them away and went off to prepare a fresh plate. A few minutes later she returned with another pair, cooked in exactly the same way, and once again assured me they were poached. By this point I was beginning to suspect that she and I had fundamentally different ideas about what it meant to poach an egg. Why poached eggs should be swimming in oil was a mystery known only to her. I decided that discretion was the better part of valour and ate what I’d been given. In Sicily, I could only describe such a breakfast as a tragedy.
A Trick of Perspective
So far I had encountered Ragusa in two guises: as a hotel experience and a gastronomic one. The hotel, with its room carved into the rock, had all the ingredients of a tragicomedy, while dinner with the donkey had turned into a comedy of misunderstandings. But the thing people actually come to Ragusa for — the Baroque — was something I hadn’t even begun to explore. Time for a walk.
The hotel is only a few minutes’ walk from Ibla’s main square, Piazza Duomo. It’s a monumental space, lined with cafés and shops selling everything from local produce and souvenirs to clothes. But all of that fades into the background beside the building that dominates it: the Baroque Duomo di San Giorgio.
I didn’t manage to see the interior, but the façade alone was enough to keep me there. San Giorgio is considered one of the finest examples of Sicilian Baroque architecture, and what fascinated me was not just the wealth of decoration but the way the entire building sits within its setting. The monumental flight of steps adds to the drama of the composition. The façade is lavishly decorated with columns and statues, arranged in three tiers, one above the other. The bell tower is incorporated into the façade itself, so the façade rises like an enormous Baroque tower.
The architect was Rosario Gagliardi, whom I mention because of one detail that particularly delighted me: his masterly handling of perspective. He didn’t place the church exactly on the square’s axis but turned it slightly to the left. That seemingly tiny shift, together with the monumental staircase, gives the composition an unusual sense of depth and movement. The façade is anything but a flat theatrical backdrop.
The dome arrived some eighty years after Gagliardi drew up his plans, in Neoclassical dress. And thanks to that very twist, it can now be seen rising behind the façade, revealing the building’s depth. San Giorgio has since become one of the most recognisable sights in south-eastern Sicily. Piazza Duomo also appears in the television series Inspector Montalbano, which has had an enormous influence on tourism in the area. So, after my earlier encounter with the inspector in Scicli, I had found myself at another of his favourite haunts.
The City That Hadn’t Woken Up Yet
After San Giorgio, I continued my walk through Ibla. It was New Year’s Eve morning, and the town seemed determined to sleep through most of it. Hardly anyone on the streets. The occasional local passed by; tourists were almost entirely absent. I had the distinct impression that I was the only person who had decided to go sightseeing in Ragusa that morning.
After the disaster that had passed for breakfast at the hotel, I could have done with a proper Italian coffee. Ragusa had shown me the evening before that it knew how to feed a visitor. In the morning, though, it seemed rather less inclined to help. The problem was that nothing was open.
I headed towards the eastern edge of Ibla, passing Baroque palaces, churches and monasteries. In almost any other town, many of these buildings would have been major attractions. Here, they were practically incidental. In fact, it was difficult to single anything out. Ragusa has Baroque in positively industrial quantities, and after San Giorgio no other Baroque building managed to hold my attention for long.
Two things, however, stayed with me. The first was Giardino Ibleo, whose palms and views across the surrounding valley offered a welcome break from all those stone façades. The second lay not far from the park and was something entirely different. Amid all that Baroque stood the Catalan Gothic portal of the old church of San Giorgio, one of the few surviving fragments of pre-Baroque Ragusa.
When ‘Superiore’ Turns Out to Be Quite Literal
I wandered around Ibla for another half-hour. Still no coffee. I took that as a sign it was time to move on.
I checked out of the hotel and headed for Ragusa Superiore, the other half of the town, built after the great earthquake. One glance in its direction was enough to explain why it was called Superiore. You can, of course, walk up, but I still had Noto ahead of me, the hire car needed returning, and my luggage was in it anyway.
It turned out that the climb wasn’t exactly easy by car either. The narrow, winding streets once again made me grateful to the hire-car company for giving me a little Fiat 500. I’m not sure how I would have managed with anything more substantial. Even the Fiat left very little margin for error.
Unlike old Ragusa, the newer part made a fairly ordinary impression on me. Perhaps I did it an injustice with such a brief visit, but nothing I saw particularly caught my interest. Mostly a town of steep climbs, without much to draw me in.
In fact, all I really wanted to see was the Cathedral of San Giovanni Battista, but even that proved complicated. There was barely anywhere to park, until someone happened to pull out of a space nearby. I managed to stop for a moment, take a few photographs and carry on towards Noto.
A few photographs were all I felt I needed from Ragusa Superiore. From Ibla, despite never finding that coffee, I took away rather more.
I certainly want to return to Ragusa. After all, it still owes me a proper breakfast.
For Those Who Want to Know More
Millennia Beneath the Baroque
It’s easy to think of Ragusa as nothing but Baroque, which is a little unfair to the several thousand years of history beneath it. The Baroque was, after all, only the town’s last great architectural layer, even if its façades have almost completely obscured everything that came before.
The wider Ragusa area has been inhabited since prehistoric times, while settlement on the hill of Ibla itself dates back to the second millennium BC. Among Sicily’s earliest known inhabitants were the Sicans and, later, the Sicels, a people who came to the island from the Italian peninsula. As the Sicels spread, the Sicans were gradually pushed towards western Sicily.
The ancient town of Hybla Heraea, one of the more important Sicel centres, is most likely to have stood on the site of present-day Ragusa Ibla. Unlike many other towns in eastern Sicily, Hybla managed to retain a degree of independence from the neighbouring Greek colonies for a long time. Very little remains of the ancient town itself, but archaeological finds and burial grounds bear witness to its age. The name Ragusa Ibla was officially adopted in 1922, a deliberate reminder of that distant past.
After periods of Roman, Vandal and Ostrogothic rule, Sicily came under Byzantine control in the sixth century. Early forms of the present name Ragusa also appear in this period, although the name’s origins remain uncertain. The Byzantines fortified the settlement with walls and a castle, but that did not save it from Arab conquest in the ninth century. According to the traditional chronology, the Arabs first captured Ragusa in 848.
Arab rule gave way to the Normans in the eleventh century. In 1091, Roger I de Hauteville granted Ragusa to his son Geoffrey as a county. According to local tradition, Geoffrey was responsible for enlarging and embellishing the old church of San Giorgio, of which only the monumental portal survives today.
In 1296, the County of Ragusa was joined to the County of Modica under Manfredi Chiaramonte. Modica, Ragusa, Scicli and Chiaramonte came under the same administration, forming one of Sicily’s largest feudal domains.
The Chiaramonte family’s name still survives in a street and a square in Ibla, while Ragusa and Modica went on to share much of their political history for centuries. That didn’t always mean harmonious relations, as would become particularly clear much later, when the question arose of which town should become the provincial capital.
The Franciscans, a Garden and a Portal That Survived
The Franciscans have been present in Ragusa since the thirteenth century. According to local tradition, their community was established as early as 1225, when the Franciscan order itself was still relatively young. They built their monastery on the edge of the town as it then existed, and not by accident. Such a location kept them close to the poor, the sick and travellers while allowing the degree of seclusion required for religious life.
The church of San Francesco all’Immacolata was originally Gothic. Later rebuilding, and especially the earthquake of 1693, substantially altered its appearance. Only a few elements of the medieval church survived, including a portal and the lower section of the bell tower. The present monastery largely dates from the rebuilding of the early eighteenth century.
Not far from the Franciscan complex lies Giardino Ibleo, a public garden established in 1858. The project was initiated by three wealthy residents of Ibla: Carmelo Arezzo di Trifiletti, Emanuele La Rocca Impillizzeri di San Filippo and Giuseppe Maggiore, Marquis of Santa Barbara. Other townspeople contributed both money and labour.
The garden was expanded and improved over the following decades, and today it combines greenery, viewpoints and historic buildings. It contains the churches of San Vincenzo Ferreri and San Giacomo, as well as a Capuchin church in the south-eastern part of the garden. In a town dominated by the stone façades of Baroque palaces and churches, it offers a particularly welcome change of scene.
Immediately beside Giardino Ibleo stands one of the most interesting remnants of medieval Ragusa: the portal of the old church of San Giorgio.
Built in the Catalan Gothic style, it is usually dated to the fifteenth century. Its lunette shows St George on horseback slaying the dragon, while Aragonese symbols can be identified among the elaborate stone carvings. The portal is almost all that survives of the once substantial church, badly damaged by the earthquake of 1693. Most of the remaining structure was removed over the following centuries.
Nearby is the church of Santissimo Trovato, built in the early nineteenth century beside remains of walls associated with the Byzantine period. Within a relatively small area, the medieval, Baroque and later layers of the town meet.
San Giorgio, San Giovanni and Their Baroque Rivals
Today’s Duomo di San Giorgio is considered one of the finest works of Rosario Gagliardi, the architect who did so much to shape south-eastern Sicily after the devastating earthquake of 1693.
Gagliardi drew up the design in 1738, and construction began in the years that followed. The monumental façade, which also serves as a bell tower, is characteristic of late Sicilian Baroque architecture. Its composition shows the influence of Roman Baroque masters, particularly Borromini and Bernini.
The façade is not a flat stone wall but a complex arrangement of concave and convex surfaces, columns and pilasters. Their placement heightens the sense of verticality as the whole building rises above the monumental staircase. A further effect comes from the church’s slight rotation relative to the square’s axis, the device through which Gagliardi created the remarkable play of perspective I described in the main travelogue.
The dome we see today belongs to a later, Neoclassical phase of construction. Completed around 1820, it was traditionally attributed to the local builder Carmelo Cultraro, though more recent research also points to the architect Stefano Ittar. Its design drew on the dome of the Panthéon in Paris.
The church’s interior contains valuable altars, paintings by eighteenth-century Sicilian artists and a monumental organ built by the Bergamo firm Serassi. Known as the Organum Maximum, it has no fewer than 3,368 pipes and is one of Sicily’s most important historic organs.
San Giorgio is, however, far from the only church in Ragusa worth a look.
On Piazza Pola stands San Giuseppe, whose façade bears such a resemblance to San Giorgio that for a long time it was thought to have been designed by the same architect. Its authorship remains uncertain. While some architectural historians have attributed it to Gagliardi, Paolo Nifosì has suggested the Carmelite friar Fra Alberto Maria di San Giovanni Battista as a possible designer.
The resemblance is not hard to understand. Both churches belong to the same architectural milieu, and both feature richly ornamented façades, a strong vertical emphasis and the Baroque interplay of curved surfaces.
The Cathedral of San Giovanni Battista in Ragusa Superiore has a somewhat different history. The first church in the new town was built as early as 1694, soon after the earthquake, but became too small as the population grew. Work on a replacement began in 1718 and continued for decades.
The central part opened for worship in 1741, while construction and decoration of the rest continued through the second half of the century. Particularly notable are the elaborate stucco work by the brothers Giuseppe and Gioacchino Gianforma, executed in the 1770s. The dome was completed in 1783 and later received the copper covering that gives it its distinctive appearance.
The original façade design provided for two monumental bell towers, but only the left-hand one was completed. The cathedral is consequently somewhat asymmetrical, although the richness of its decoration suggests that this was hardly what its builders originally intended.
San Giovanni Battista only became a cathedral in 1950, when the Diocese of Ragusa was established. San Giorgio in Ibla remained a duomo, the principal church of the old town. The two great churches thus continued to bear witness to the former rivalry, even though Ragusa’s two halves had long since been administratively reunited.
Palaces, an Aristocrats’ Club and the Last City Gate
Ragusa Ibla is not only a town of churches. Its Baroque rebuilding also produced numerous palaces that testify to the wealth of the families who ruled the town for centuries.
Among them is Palazzo Battaglia, built in the eighteenth century not far from Piazza Duomo. Along Corso XXV Aprile stand Palazzo Arezzo di Donnafugata and Palazzo Arezzo di Trifiletti, two buildings associated with one of the most influential aristocratic families in Ibla’s history.
Particularly interesting is the Circolo di Conversazione, a Neoclassical building from the nineteenth century that served as a club for the local aristocracy. Modelled on British gentlemen’s clubs, it was a place for socialising, conversation, reading and games. The club is still active today, with fairly strict membership rules.
Women were only admitted in 1974. For a club devoted to conversation, it took an awfully long time to widen its circle of potential conversationalists.
One of Ragusa’s old defensive structures also survives: Porta Walter, also known as Porta Vattiri. It is the only remaining gate of the five that once provided entry into the old town. The present arch dates from the seventeenth century, and nearby stands the monumental complex of the monastery and church of Santa Maria del Gesù.
Two Ragusas, Two Mayors and One Province
Ragusa’s division after the earthquake of 1693 was not simply a matter of differing opinions about how to rebuild. Behind it lay a long-running rivalry between two parishes and their social groups: the Sangiorgiari, gathered around San Giorgio, and the Sangiovannari, attached to San Giovanni.
In old Ibla, the traditional nobility and more conservative families predominated, while Ragusa Superiore developed as the centre of a new middle class. The differences were religious, but also economic and political.
Eventually the division became so pronounced that in 1865 Ragusa Superiore and Ragusa Inferiore became two separate municipalities, each with its own administration and mayor. The arrangement lasted for more than sixty years, despite occasional attempts at rapprochement.
In the early twentieth century, Ragusa was known for its strong socialist movement, but the rise of Fascism gradually altered the local political landscape. One influential figure in the new regime was Filippo Pennavaria, a politician whose connections at the national level played an important part in the subsequent administrative reorganisation.
The two Ragusas were reunited as a single municipality in 1926. In early 1927 a new Province of Ragusa was established, with Ragusa itself as its capital.
This gave Ragusa an advantage over Modica, which had previously been an important administrative centre for the wider area. The decision was shaped not only by geography and economics but also by the political influence of local representatives of the Fascist regime.
Over the twentieth century, Ragusa developed into one of Sicily’s more prosperous areas, largely through agriculture, food production and industry. At the same time, its historic centre grew steadily more important to the island’s cultural and tourist appeal.
In 2002, Ragusa was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List together with seven other late-Baroque towns of south-eastern Sicily.
And so the earthquake of 1693, which had almost destroyed the town, ultimately helped make Ragusa one of Europe’s most important examples of Baroque architecture.
My Walking Route
For anyone who would like to follow the same walk, this is the route I took through Ibla.
- Hotel San Giorgio Palace → Piazza Duomo and the Duomo di San Giorgio
- Via Conte Cabrera, Largo Camerina and Via Chiaramonte → the small square with Cucina e Vino and Palazzo Battaglia
- Piazza Chiaramonte → the church and monastery of San Francesco all’Immacolata
- Via Tenente La Rocca → Giardino Ibleo and the portal of the old church of San Giorgio
- Via dei Normanni → a view of Santissimo Trovato
- Via Porte Modica → Piazza Pola and San Giuseppe
- Corso XXV Aprile → Palazzo Arezzo di Donnafugata, Palazzo Arezzo di Trifiletti and the Circolo di Conversazione
- Via del Convento and Via Torrenuova → Porta Walter, Santa Maria del Gesù and back to the hotel
Then by car through Ibla’s narrow streets and up Corso Mazzini to Ragusa Superiore and the Cathedral of San Giovanni Battista.
