I’m all about finding the authentic, tapping in to quiet moments of wonder and discovering something
new. Those are hard things to do when you hear more American accents than local, and the whole place is so curated for day trippers you feel more like you’re at the Italian pavilion in Disney’s Epcot than in an historic Sicilian town.
That’s not to say you should skip Noto. It’s gorgeous. Just not as wonderful as the towns I told you about in the first part of this report. Let’s move on to my “best of the rest” across this fascinating region cum World Heritage Site.
AN OVER-CROWDED THIRD: NOTO
Noto is a monumental piece of planned cityscaping, on par with the Champs d’Elysee in Paris or The Mall in Washington D.C. When the town planners went to work here, they decided to organise the city by social class and function. Magnificent went high, practical and utilitarian got a space down the hill. A wide strip down the middle hosted the civic buildings and spaces where everyone met. The whole place is built into a hillside facing due west, turning its honey-coloured stone face even more golden in the afternoon light and treating everyone to blockbuster sunsets. That’s the Instagram moment for modern sightseers, and one I skipped after seeing the crowds on a morning visit. (I also had the advantage of a private, rooftop hot tub with its own sunset view back at our apartment, Melifra.)
The Corso Vittorio Emanuele is the spine that separates high and low. It hosts churches, government buildings, theatres and some of the biggest palaces. There are more grand homes and monasteries above, with lots of showy staircases the locals have painted to promote upcoming events or simply as vertical murals. The commercial part of town is below; both elegant 18th century buildings and a sprawl of modern ones. Driving into Noto was the worst traffic I encountered in Sicily outside of Palermo; it took me more than half an hour to get from the main road through this bit to the main tourist car parks up by the municipal playing field.
The effort is worth it, especially if you arrive on the Corso at the right place. If you’ve parked near the sports field, find the Via Vincenzo Gioberti. Come down it and you emerge out of a small, dark lane onto an elevated piazza with the whole town spread beneath you. This is “the money shot” of the Val di Noto, with stairs and formal gardens ahead of you, the cathedral atop its massive flight of stairs below and to your right, the elegant town hall across from it and magnificent buildings stretching away. It’s no wonder a Sotheby’s Real Estate sign is the first bit of branding you see here. What appealed to rich people at the turn of the 18th century still appeals today.
Descend onto the Corso and you’ll find a variety of churches, small museums and shops to poke around in. It’s the same mix as the other towns in the Val: pottery, luxury foodstuffs, clothing, jewellery. But it feels like there’s a higher percentage of those tourist tat shops where you can be fairly sure the cheap magnets, colourful dish towels and miniature versions of Sicilian pots were made in China.
One spot stands above the rest and deserves your attention. Yes, Cafe Sicilia is exactly as delicious as you thought it would be when you watched the wonderful Chef’s Table documentary about it on Netflix. Yes, theirs are the best cannoli I’ve ever had in my life. (And trust me, this child of the Ferraras of Novara di Sicilia has consumed a lot of cannoli in her life.)
That’s not to say you should skip Noto. It’s gorgeous. Just not as wonderful as the towns I told you about in the first part of this report. Let’s move on to my “best of the rest” across this fascinating region cum World Heritage Site.
AN OVER-CROWDED THIRD: NOTO
Noto is a monumental piece of planned cityscaping, on par with the Champs d’Elysee in Paris or The Mall in Washington D.C. When the town planners went to work here, they decided to organise the city by social class and function. Magnificent went high, practical and utilitarian got a space down the hill. A wide strip down the middle hosted the civic buildings and spaces where everyone met. The whole place is built into a hillside facing due west, turning its honey-coloured stone face even more golden in the afternoon light and treating everyone to blockbuster sunsets. That’s the Instagram moment for modern sightseers, and one I skipped after seeing the crowds on a morning visit. (I also had the advantage of a private, rooftop hot tub with its own sunset view back at our apartment, Melifra.)
The Corso Vittorio Emanuele is the spine that separates high and low. It hosts churches, government buildings, theatres and some of the biggest palaces. There are more grand homes and monasteries above, with lots of showy staircases the locals have painted to promote upcoming events or simply as vertical murals. The commercial part of town is below; both elegant 18th century buildings and a sprawl of modern ones. Driving into Noto was the worst traffic I encountered in Sicily outside of Palermo; it took me more than half an hour to get from the main road through this bit to the main tourist car parks up by the municipal playing field.
The effort is worth it, especially if you arrive on the Corso at the right place. If you’ve parked near the sports field, find the Via Vincenzo Gioberti. Come down it and you emerge out of a small, dark lane onto an elevated piazza with the whole town spread beneath you. This is “the money shot” of the Val di Noto, with stairs and formal gardens ahead of you, the cathedral atop its massive flight of stairs below and to your right, the elegant town hall across from it and magnificent buildings stretching away. It’s no wonder a Sotheby’s Real Estate sign is the first bit of branding you see here. What appealed to rich people at the turn of the 18th century still appeals today.
Descend onto the Corso and you’ll find a variety of churches, small museums and shops to poke around in. It’s the same mix as the other towns in the Val: pottery, luxury foodstuffs, clothing, jewellery. But it feels like there’s a higher percentage of those tourist tat shops where you can be fairly sure the cheap magnets, colourful dish towels and miniature versions of Sicilian pots were made in China.
I suspect it was because they use sheep’s milk ricotta rather than cow’s to create a cannoli cream that’s silky smooth yet not too sweet and has just a touch of sharpness to it. There’s no additional flavouring. No added chocolate chips. No ends dusted in crusted pistachios or anything else. Just cannoli cream in a light, perfectly crispy shell. The simplest of incarnations, and the most perfect. I tried that in house, in a dining area that feels like it hasn’t changed since the ‘60s despite the place’s recent fame, and got a box to take away with a variety of other goodies we sampled across the next few days. Their single-serving Cassata Siciliana was so amazing I may never attempt to make one again, so inferior are my efforts. If the traffic wasn’t so bad, and the crowds so thick, I would have probably returned to Noto several times just to continue working my way through Cafe Sicilia’s menu.
Leave the architecture. Take the cannoli.
A FOURTH FOR THE CRAFTY: CALTAGIRONE
A profound danger of the combination of social media and digital photography is that certain things can be made to look dramatically grander than they actually are.
The 430-foot long staircase of Santa Maria del Monte is the most frequently shared photo of this town. It’s famous for the front of each step being tiled with a different pattern, representing the output of this legendary centre of ceramic production. Once a year, it’s decked out with an amazing floral festival. I knew I wouldn’t see that. But many other pictures show plants and pottery spilling out onto the length of the staircase, plants cascading from the balconies above and everything drenched in bright colour. The truth? The buildings on either side are a bit grungy, few shops extend their wares onto the steps and the patterns on the tiles are so small, and so subtle in their colouring, that the whole thing just appears grey from any distance. The Spanish Steps, it’s not.
Caltagirone sprawls a long way. It’s definitely worth hopping a ride on the little motorised train that tells you about the town while driving you around the highlights. You’re at the northwest tip of the region here and you’ve lost the golden stone of Ragusa, Scicli and Noto. The buildings are grey. Fewer have been restored and cleaned. There’s far less flamboyant Baroque architecture here.
So why bother? This is the centre of ceramics production in Sicily. You’ll find plenty of shops in every town in the Val di Noto selling interpretations of the classics, particularly pots shaped like the heads of kings and queens and the three-legged “trinacria” with Medusa’s head at the centre. Here, however, you’ll find them in bewildering abundance.
A FOURTH FOR THE CRAFTY: CALTAGIRONE
A profound danger of the combination of social media and digital photography is that certain things can be made to look dramatically grander than they actually are.
The 430-foot long staircase of Santa Maria del Monte is the most frequently shared photo of this town. It’s famous for the front of each step being tiled with a different pattern, representing the output of this legendary centre of ceramic production. Once a year, it’s decked out with an amazing floral festival. I knew I wouldn’t see that. But many other pictures show plants and pottery spilling out onto the length of the staircase, plants cascading from the balconies above and everything drenched in bright colour. The truth? The buildings on either side are a bit grungy, few shops extend their wares onto the steps and the patterns on the tiles are so small, and so subtle in their colouring, that the whole thing just appears grey from any distance. The Spanish Steps, it’s not.
Caltagirone sprawls a long way. It’s definitely worth hopping a ride on the little motorised train that tells you about the town while driving you around the highlights. You’re at the northwest tip of the region here and you’ve lost the golden stone of Ragusa, Scicli and Noto. The buildings are grey. Fewer have been restored and cleaned. There’s far less flamboyant Baroque architecture here.
If you like to see craftspeople at work, it’s great fun to wander down back lanes and look into studios where people are shaping or painting the clay. If you were a collector, this is the place you come for the new and different. It’s obvious that modern artists have their studios here beside the traditional producers and are creating stuff closer to Grayson Perry than the decor in every restaurant. I found it fascinating to wander shop-to-shop to see the differences, and to see how certain producers reacted to interiors trends or found a specific niche. One place leaned into African motifs and animal prints, another into a dark, spooky Goth vibe. Same basic shapes, radically different interpretations.
Pottery fans will find this all great fun. But Caltagirone is a bit of a one-trick pony. If you aren’t into the nuances of ceramics, you’re likely to poke your head into a few shops and then … as my husband did … retreat to a bench on a piazza with your Kindle while the pottery fans keep wandering. Even if you do love the art form, you may find the sheer abundance too overwhelming to make any choices. I did buy a piece of pottery, but not until later in Scicli, where I actually found having less choice helped me to hone in on a style I liked. There is no monetary advantage to coming to Caltagirone; I found prices fairly consistent across the whole region. So I’d advise that this is a town for the specialist rather than the casual tourist.
If you do find yourself here, however, make time for an al fresco lunch at A Cumacca. Its outdoor tables are beautifully located on a staircase … less famous than the one mentioned above but with the advantage of being in the middle of the upper town. Part of town, including the tiled staircase, stretches above you while more stairs plunge downward. The “lower town” rises from below and fills the other horizon. You can enjoy a lazy meal contemplating the workout anyone who lives here must get while walking around. No wonder they can pack away the pasta.
The best place to park for sightseeing is along the Viale Regina Elena at the top of town. Walk across the road to where the hilltop falls away beneath you to be treated to a spectacular view of the hills and plains of central Sicily, with Etna looming in the distance. When you consider that the volcano is more than 40 miles away from this point, you start to grasp just how big it is.
If you do find yourself here, however, make time for an al fresco lunch at A Cumacca. Its outdoor tables are beautifully located on a staircase … less famous than the one mentioned above but with the advantage of being in the middle of the upper town. Part of town, including the tiled staircase, stretches above you while more stairs plunge downward. The “lower town” rises from below and fills the other horizon. You can enjoy a lazy meal contemplating the workout anyone who lives here must get while walking around. No wonder they can pack away the pasta.
The best place to park for sightseeing is along the Viale Regina Elena at the top of town. Walk across the road to where the hilltop falls away beneath you to be treated to a spectacular view of the hills and plains of central Sicily, with Etna looming in the distance. When you consider that the volcano is more than 40 miles away from this point, you start to grasp just how big it is.
AN UNFAIR FIFTH? MODICA
Fair disclosure: We spent less than an hour nosing around Modica in advance of dinner at Accursio, a Michelin-starred restaurant there. (Report to come.) The meal was one of the highlights of the trip. The town, we could take or leave.
It has the requisite grand architecture: showy churches sitting atop mountainous staircases, extravagant palaces with ornate balcony braces and door and window surrounds. But it also has a major road making a dogleg right through the centre of town, and with that a feeling of almost big-city scale and modern usage. Modica felt a bit closer to Palermo or Catania than to its Val di Noto sisters.
Its biggest claim to fame is a distinctive kind of chocolate, which is sold in many specialist shops throughout town. Modica’s cioccolato is a PR and messaging triumph. You will read, hear and watch the same story repeated: this is special because it’s closer to the chocolate first brought over by Spaniards. It’s truly artisan. It’s unique. Connoisseurs appreciate its grainy nature.
Fair disclosure: We spent less than an hour nosing around Modica in advance of dinner at Accursio, a Michelin-starred restaurant there. (Report to come.) The meal was one of the highlights of the trip. The town, we could take or leave.
Its biggest claim to fame is a distinctive kind of chocolate, which is sold in many specialist shops throughout town. Modica’s cioccolato is a PR and messaging triumph. You will read, hear and watch the same story repeated: this is special because it’s closer to the chocolate first brought over by Spaniards. It’s truly artisan. It’s unique. Connoisseurs appreciate its grainy nature.
Let’s be honest, people. Sometimes “original” is not better.
Chefs have been improving and perfecting chocolate for centuries. I prefer their innovations. We tried Modica’s speciality at multiple shops, from multiple makers, in multiple flavours. Uniformly, it tasted like chocolate that had gone wrong in the tempering process. The overwhelming top note is raw sugar, not cacao in any form. The fact that the chocolate presented by the local Michelin-starred chef was not grainy Modica stuff but the smooth, tempered, cocoa-forward version most of us know and love says it all.
Modica may possibly win the prize for best Val di Noto nightlife, though we didn’t go out enough to do a fair compare-and-contrast. We left the restaurant around 10:30 to find the streets heaving with people. Not tourists, but Italians, disproportionately under 40. There were so many people the main street had been shut down and pedestrianised to facilitate socialising. (This necessitated a long, dark, twisting, sometimes white-knuckle reroute home that would not have been for the faint-hearted driver.) The crowds were not out for a festival or anything special, this was just the Saturday night passeggiata in Modica. Grab a drink, take a stroll, celebrate life with your friends. Impressive.
BEYOND ARCHITECTURE…
The reason for the Val di Noto World Heritage listing is Baroque buildings. But if you’ve had enough, there’s also a lovely coastline dotted with small fishing villages, beaches (mostly empty during our September visit) and the wonderful Vendicari Nature Reserve. There are more than 3,700 acres of protected landscape along the coast in this reserve. Well-maintained hiking trails take you through lagoons, grasslands, salt marshes, beaches and some picturesque ruins. The latter includes an impressive old tuna production facility, or tonnara, making a statement as romantic as any castle on the coast.
Information boards throughout tell you about the flora and fauna, explaining that more than 180 species of birds visit the reserve on their annual migratory paths. This makes spring and autumn the best times to wander here. In late September we were lucky enough to see the beginning of the flamingo migration. Numbers would have increased in the coming month but there were still about 50 on the lagoon we hiked to. These were nowhere near the vivid pink of the genus lawnus plasticus, but rather a rose-tinted cream. They are marvellously odd-looking creatures whose long-legged marsh wading and angular bending for feeding is incredibly entertaining. We completely lost track of time perched in the bird-watching hides taking in their antics.
There are a variety of different beaches along the shore here, some smooth and powdery, others rockier and with more waves. The reserve web site has clear descriptions. In a country where “beach” usually means serried ranks of chairs and umbrellas hired from beach clubs who control patches of sand, this is where you’ll find the wilder, more natural coasts common in other parts of the world.
Not far off this shore, but outside the reserve, is the Villa Romana del Tellaro, which is your best chance to see spectacular ancient mosaics in the region if you don’t have time to get all the way to the Villa Romana del Casale.
We drove the coast road from Vendicari down to Portopalo di Capo, Sicily’s southeastern tip. It’s 12 miles of vineyards, commercial tomato farms, still-working fishing communities, quiet coastal roads and small pockets of beach.
BEYOND ARCHITECTURE…
The reason for the Val di Noto World Heritage listing is Baroque buildings. But if you’ve had enough, there’s also a lovely coastline dotted with small fishing villages, beaches (mostly empty during our September visit) and the wonderful Vendicari Nature Reserve. There are more than 3,700 acres of protected landscape along the coast in this reserve. Well-maintained hiking trails take you through lagoons, grasslands, salt marshes, beaches and some picturesque ruins. The latter includes an impressive old tuna production facility, or tonnara, making a statement as romantic as any castle on the coast.
There are a variety of different beaches along the shore here, some smooth and powdery, others rockier and with more waves. The reserve web site has clear descriptions. In a country where “beach” usually means serried ranks of chairs and umbrellas hired from beach clubs who control patches of sand, this is where you’ll find the wilder, more natural coasts common in other parts of the world.
Not far off this shore, but outside the reserve, is the Villa Romana del Tellaro, which is your best chance to see spectacular ancient mosaics in the region if you don’t have time to get all the way to the Villa Romana del Casale.
We drove the coast road from Vendicari down to Portopalo di Capo, Sicily’s southeastern tip. It’s 12 miles of vineyards, commercial tomato farms, still-working fishing communities, quiet coastal roads and small pockets of beach.
I saw a lot of signs for agrotourismi … the Italian take on farm-based B&Bs … and I suspect there’s an entirely different sort of tourist that fills this coast in high summer. You could do a moderately priced beach holiday here with plenty of activity, local colour in the port villages of Marzamemi and Portopalo, without ever bothering with the architecture-rich World Heritage Site.
Whatever your preferred holiday, my experience made it clear that the Val di Noto is worth more than a day trip. This is a place to sink in, go local and enjoy.
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