Ragusa Ibla and the Hyblaean Hills

Ragusa, in the southeastern corner of Sicily, is two towns with one name. On January 11, 1693, an earthquake destroyed this part of the island, and when the survivors rebuilt, they split: one group moved up onto the plateau and laid out a new town on a grid, the other rebuilt on the old spur where the town had always been. The new one is Ragusa Superiore. The old one is Ragusa Ibla, and it is the reason people come.

What is special about Ragusa, Sicily?

That it was built twice, in the same style, at the same time, and that both halves survive. Eight towns of the Val di Noto were rebuilt after 1693 in the late baroque that the reconstruction produced, and all eight were inscribed together on the UNESCO World Heritage list in 2002: Ragusa, Modica, Noto, Scicli, Catania, Caltagirone, Militello Val di Catania and Palazzolo Acreide. Ragusa is the one where you can stand on a terrace in the upper town and look at the whole of the lower one across a ravine, roofs and domes and nothing modern in the frame.

Ragusa Ibla, on foot

Ibla is compact, steep and closed to most traffic. Half a day is enough, and the walk is the visit.

The cathedral of San Giorgio stands at the top of a sloping piazza, at an angle to it, which is deliberate: the facade was designed to be seen from below and across. Rosario Gagliardi drew it in 1738 and it was built between 1739 and 1775, with a convex front rising in three tiers and a dome added in the next century. Gagliardi is the architect of this whole corner of Sicily, and this is his best building.

The Giardino Ibleo, at the far end, is a public garden on the edge of the spur, with palm avenues and three churches inside it, looking out over the valley. It is where the town goes in the evening.

Santa Maria delle Scale is up on the ridge between the two towns, at the head of the long stone staircase that joins them. The view from the terrace beside it is the one on the postcards, and walking the stairs down into Ibla, rather than driving around, is the right way to arrive. Coming back up is another matter: there are buses.

Which is better to visit, Ragusa or Modica?

Both, if you have two days, since they are fifteen kilometers apart.

Modica is the one for chocolate, worked cold in the way brought from Mexico through the Spanish, and for a cathedral at the head of a monumental staircase. Ragusa Ibla is the one for the streets: it is denser, quieter and more lived in, and its baroque is concentrated rather than spread out. Our guide to Ortigia, Noto and Modica covers the other towns of the baroque southeast, and this one stays in Ragusa.

If you only have a day, take Ragusa Ibla in the late afternoon and stay for dinner: the light on that stone at the end of the day is the argument.

The Hyblaean countryside

The hills around Ragusa, the Monti Iblei, are a limestone plateau cut by deep gorges, and they look like nowhere else in Sicily. The fields are divided by dry stone walls built without mortar, hundreds of kilometers of them, white against the grass in winter and against the burnt gold in August. The art of building them was inscribed by UNESCO on the list of intangible cultural heritage in 2018, and the Iblei are one of the Italian areas named in it.

Between the walls stand carob trees, which is the other signature of this country: broad, dark, evergreen, with the pods that were once animal feed and are now sold as flour in health food shops. Old stone farms sit at the end of long tracks, many of them now working farms that host visitors for lunch.

The gorges are worth a half day. Cava d'Ispica is a canyon fifteen kilometers long with tombs, cave dwellings and rock churches cut into its sides, inhabited from prehistory into the Middle Ages.

This is the landscape our journeys use for their farm day: a working organic farm in the Hyblaean hills where lunch is cooked by the people who grow it, on both the Jasmine and the Amber routes.

Inspector Montalbano was filmed here

If you have watched the series, you have seen these places. The television Vigata is assembled from several towns: the police station is Palazzo Iacono in Piazza Italia at Scicli, twenty minutes away, and the commissioner's office is filmed inside the mayor's room in Scicli town hall. Montalbano's house at Marinella is in Punta Secca, on the coast half an hour from Ragusa, a small blue-shuttered house on the sand beside a lighthouse. A good part of the series was shot in Ragusa Ibla itself.

The locations are all real towns going about their business, not a set. Go early, be quiet in the town hall, and remember that Punta Secca in August is a beach village full of Sicilian families rather than a film location.

How long you need, and how to get there

Half a day for Ibla. A full day with Modica or Scicli. Two days if you want the countryside and the gorges as well.

A car is close to essential out here. Ragusa is about two hours from Catania, two hours and a half from Taormina, an hour and a half from Syracuse. Trains reach Ragusa but slowly and rarely; buses are better but still thin. Our guide to getting around Sicily explains where public transport works on the island and where it does not, and this is the main place where it does not.

Park in the upper town and walk down, or use the bus that runs between the two halves. Driving into Ibla is possible but pointless.

Where this fits in a trip

Eastern Sicily divides into three: the volcano and the Ionian coast, the Greek and baroque southeast, and the Hyblaean interior. Most itineraries take the first two and skip the third, which is why the third is still quiet. Our ten day eastern Sicily itinerary shows how to fit them together, and our guide to where to base yourself covers what you gain and lose by sleeping down here rather than on the coast.

If you would rather have the drives and the farm arranged, our journeys already include the Hyblaean day, and Design your trip is where a longer version starts.