We had been planning to have lunch in Scicli yesterday, but went today instead. It’s not quite so ostentatious in its charms, but not without them either. We had lunch by the weirdly overblown Palazzo Beneventano:-
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Mòdica (2)
We went back to Mòdica on a grey Saturday because we realised that we had managed to miss the cathedral in Mòdica Alta, the grandest of its buildings and another work attributed to Rosario Gagliardi:-
Mòdica (1)
It was worth going to Mòdica if only for its wonderful chocolate shop, Antico Dolceria Bonaiuto, tucked down an alleyway on the Corso Umberto I:-
Ragusa Ibla
Our first glimpse of Ragusa Ibla:-
The Duomo, dedicated, very obviously, to St. George:-
Zaha Hadid RA
News of Zaha Hadid’s death has reached southern Italy. It has made me think back on her career. I first became aware of her – other than through the controversy surrounding the Cardiff opera house – through an exhibition of her drawings and designs which was shown at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art over Christmas 1997. They were astonishingly inventive. At the time, they seemed like fantasies and one was not encouraged to think of them as buildable. They were comments on the language of architecture. But the last two decades have seen versions of them built – magnificent free structures in the tradition of the Russian constructivists – including the Olympic Aquatics Centre which is the best place to see her work in London. In an interview with Alain Elkann conducted in August 2012, she ends by saying ‘You need to convince other people to do the impossible. This is my profession’. A great loss.
Marzamemi
We went this morning on Susie Huxley’s recommendation to Marzamemi, a charming, small, out-of-season fishing port, full of empty restaurants and shops selling tins of tuna, infinitely preferable to Portopalo, our other destination:-
Pantàlica
I’m not sure I would recommend the Necropoli at Pantàlica, not least because of its extreme remoteness up a long gorge north of Ferla where one struggles to spot the dark holes in the limestone cliffs which were used as sites of burial from the 13th. century BC:-
Ferla
We hadn’t particularly planned to stop in Ferla en route to Pantàlica, but were impressed by its three baroque churches. San Sebastiano designed by Michelangelo Di Giacomo and finished in 1741:-
Palazzolo Acrèide
We went up onto the limestone plateau above Noto to Palazzolo Acrèidi, a dusty hilltop town with a grand town square dominated by the church of San Sebastiano:-
Noto Antica
Several people suggested that we visit Noto Antica, the medieval settlement of castle, church and gorge which was comprehensively deserted following the earthquake of 1693 and the resettlement of the new town ten miles to the south. It leaves an eerie sense of desolation up in the hills. Although the guidebooks are sniffy about it because there’s not much to see, it’s deeply silent.
This is the entrance gateway:-
The old town walls:-
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