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Sicilia 2026Seven days on the Ionian coast
Day4Day 4 · Thu 20 Aug

Ragusa & Modica

Two towns rebuilt on their own rubble, one long lunch, and the oldest chocolate in Italy

  • Ragusa Ibla
  • Duomo di San Giorgio
  • Modica chocolate
  • San Giorgio’s staircase
Ragusa Ibla seen from above, its stone houses and church domes packed along a ridge above a green valley
Ragusa Ibla on its ridge, seen from Santa Maria delle ScaleHein56didden · CC BY-SA 3.0

The other two baroque towns of the Val di Noto, and the furthest we go all week. Ragusa is really two towns stacked on one ridge — the new one on the plateau, and Ragusa Ibla spilling down below it in a tangle of grey stone and staircases, which is the half worth walking. Modica, half an hour on, is built into a gorge: one corso along the bottom and churches climbing the sides on monumental flights of steps. In between is lunch, because Ibla is where the best cooking in south-east Sicily happens, and a chocolate shop that has been working to a recipe the Spanish brought back from the Aztecs since 1880.

What it looks like

The route

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8 stops, by car

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The day, hour by hour

  1. 07:00

    South-west to Ragusa

    Aci Trezza → Ragusa Ibla

    Past Catania, then inland across the Iblei plateau — dry-stone walls, carob trees and very little else for an hour. The last stretch drops into the gorge below Ragusa and climbs back out of it.

    Drive1 h 50

    Ibla is a ZTL. Park in the lower town near the Giardino Ibleo, or on Via Ragusa Ibla at the bottom of the ridge, and walk up.

  2. 09:00

    Piazza Duomo & San Giorgio

    Ragusa Ibla

    Rosario Gagliardi’s masterpiece, and the reason Ibla is a UNESCO site: a convex three-tier façade at the top of a wide staircase, set at an angle to a sloping oval piazza so that it comes at you obliquely as you climb. Nothing else in Sicily is staged quite like it.

    Sight1 h 15Free
    Map

    Nine in the morning is the whole point — the piazza is east-facing, the stone is still gold rather than white, and the coach parties are an hour away.

  3. 10:15

    Giardino Ibleo

    The eastern tip of the ridge

    Public gardens laid out in 1858 right on the point where the ridge runs out, with three churches inside the walls and a palm avenue down the middle. On three sides the ground simply falls away into the valley. Shaded, benched, and the best place in Ibla to stop moving.

    Walk45 minFree
    Map
  4. 11:00

    Ibla’s lanes

    Between the Duomo and the Circolo

    The pleasure of Ibla is that it has no grid at all — grey stone alleys, sudden small squares, palazzi with balconies held up by carved faces. Three worth aiming at: the Circolo di Conversazione, a gentlemen’s club of 1850 that has not changed a chair since; the Teatro Donnafugata, a 99-seat opera house in miniature; and Cinabro Carrettieri, a workshop where two craftsmen still build and paint Sicilian carts by hand.

    Walk1 h
    Map

    Everything here is steps. Do the climbing now — by one o’clock the stone is radiating heat back at you.

  5. 12:00

    The long lunch

    Ragusa Ibla

    Ibla is the food stop of the week. Ristorante Duomo, Ciccio Sultano’s two-star, is a few metres from the cathedral and is the full production; Locanda Don Serafino serves its starred kitchen in a cave cut into the rock, which in August is worth something on its own. Below that there is a whole tier of very good, very unfussy places doing ravioli ricotta e maggiorana, pork from the Iblei, and Cerasuolo di Vittoria, the only DOCG on the island.

    Food2 h 15€25 upwards, or €90+ at the starred places

    Both starred places need booking weeks out in August, and both do a shorter lunch menu that costs a fraction of dinner. This is the meal of the day — supper in Modica later is deliberately small.

  6. 14:15

    Santa Maria delle Scale — the view back

    Ragusa Superiore

    Up in the new town, on the lip of the ridge, at the top of the 300-odd steps that were the only link between the two halves of Ragusa until 1926. From the terrace beside the church the whole of Ibla is laid out below you on its spur — the picture everyone takes of Ragusa is taken from here.

    View30 minFree
    Map

    Drive up rather than walk. The staircase is magnificent and it is also 300 steps in the middle of an August afternoon.

  7. 15:00

    Over to Modica

    Ragusa → Modica

    Fifteen kilometres of viaducts across the gorges. Modica appears all at once, filling both walls of a ravine.

    Drive30 min
  8. 15:30

    Antica Dolceria Bonajuto

    Corso Umberto I 159

    Sicily’s oldest chocolate house, open since 1880 and still working the cacao cold, so the sugar never melts and the bar stays grainy — a method the Spanish brought from the Aztecs to their Sicilian county of Modica and nobody here ever modernised. Try the plain one, the cinnamon, and the ’mpanatigghi, a pastry filled with chocolate and minced beef that makes more sense than it sounds.

    Food45 min
    Map

    Deliberately placed at half past three: it is indoors, it is cool, and it is the best possible way to sit out the hottest hour of the day. It also travels home well.

  9. 16:30

    Corso Umberto & San Pietro

    Modica Bassa

    The corso runs along what used to be a river, culverted after the flood of 1902. San Pietro rises off it up a staircase lined with life-size statues of the twelve apostles — you go up past them one at a time, which is exactly the effect intended.

    Walk1 h 15Free
    Map
  10. 17:45

    San Giorgio and its staircase

    Modica Alta

    Gagliardi again, and the other half of the pair he built at Ragusa: a soaring five-tier façade at the head of 250 steps that zigzag up the side of the gorge. Climb it late, when the stone has gone amber and the whole town is in the light rather than in the glare.

    Sight1 h 15Free
    Map

    Take the steps slowly and turn round often — the view back over the roofs of Modica Bassa is the reason to do it on foot.

  11. 19:15

    Supper in Modica

    Modica Bassa

    Small, after the lunch we had: scacce, the rolled flatbreads of this province, some caciocavallo ragusano, tomatoes, and a glass of Cerasuolo. Modica in the evening is lit from below and worth eating outside in.

    Food1 h 45
  12. 21:00

    Back to the coast

    Modica → Aci Trezza

    Two hours across the plateau and down to the sea. The longest single drive of the trip, and the last of the far-flung days — everything from here is close to home.

    Drive2 h
    Map