Baroque, "barocco" in ltalian, perhaps from the Portuguese "barrueco" , a rough and irregular pearl, raw but flamboyant, and few words could better describe the wealth of contrasting and exuberant forms offered by a style that seems to suit Catania so perfectly always a little too exaggerated, beyond some unspoken limit. The history of places is inscribed in the compendium of their architecture, and the cities and towns of the Noto Valley in the provinces of Catania, Syracuse and Ragusa have reached the modern age with a rich heritage of a very Sicilian brand of Baroque. The pen of novelist Vincenzo Consolo tells us more: "It was Baroque that created that unparalleled beauty, that elaborate symphony of curls and scrolls, slowness and speed empty space and fullness, worthy of some Mozart, that had never before been heard... But Baroque was not just the fruit of a casual historicai coincidence. That fanciful and crowded style, so writhingly abundant, belongs to this Sicily of continuous earthquakes and upheavals of nature, the endless round of historic reversals, the daily peril of the loss of identity, it belongs like an inescapable requisite of the soul against the bewilderment of sotitude, of indistinctness, of a desert, against the vertigo of nothingness. It is the allocated lot of the Sicilians to play upon this stage lit so dazzlingly by the sun and peopled with phantasms by full moons, between this scenery of carved stones, between intricate ledges supporting the balconies, galleries and stalls of the onlooking theatre, between allegories, symbols and emblems, masks, grotesques, gratings and grilles, domes, bell towers and pinnacles, avenues and alleys, steps, churchyards and terraces, all against a backdrop of unimaginable visions, in this dreamlike or even surreal setting..." Acireale, Caltagirone, Catania, Grammichele, Licodia Eubea, Militello, Mineo, Misterbianco, Nicolosi, Palagonia, Pedara, Trecastagni, Scordia, Vizzini. In a single day in 1693, all these places were devastated by a disastrous earthquake, soon after to be rebuilt to a greater or lesser extent in the Baroque style of the newly flourishing Noto Valley. Catania The city conserves the layout given to it in the 18th-century by the viceroy who supervised its reconstruction. The Uzeda Gate near the harbour was erected in honour of this viceroy in 1696. The gate links the Chierici Seminary to the Cathedral, the facade of which was built between 1730 and 1758 by Giovan Battista Vaccarini, who also designed the Elephant Fountain (1735-6) that stands in the square before it, reminiscent of the fountain in Piazza della Minerva in Rome. Several other buildings were commissioned from Vaccarini, including the Palazzo di Città, the Valle, Reburdone and San Giuliano palaces, the Benedictine Monastery and the Sant’Agata Abbey. The elephant carved in lava presides the square along one side of which is the town hall, the Palazzo Senatorio, built between 1695 and 1780 and designed by three architects, including Vaccarini, responsible for the smooth pilaster-strips and the Roman windows on three tiers of the facade. Architect Stefano Ittar from Rome designed the San Placido Church behind the Cathedral and the concave facade of the Collegiata Church in Via Etnea, and the Santa Maria dell’Elemosina Basilica, with a long nave and two side-aisles situated in the oldest quarter of the mediaeval city, between the Monday market in Piazza San Filippo (now Piazza Mazzini), The main square and the terrace of the senators. The church was chosen by the House of Aragon as its royal chapel. Via Crociferi is lined with an extraordinary variety of churches. Opening out from the passage beneath Villa Cerami, first we come to the San Benedetto Church, with a single nave, a portal by Vaccarini and a vestibule with a flight of marble steps. It is separated from the San Francesco Borgia Church by an alley that leads to the Palazzo Nava-Asmundo, which faces onto a small and enchanting square. Halfway along the street, before the San Francesco Borgia Church, is the San Benedetto Arch, built to replace a secret walkway purported to have linked the old Benedictine monastery to the new convent of the Benedictine nuns. This arch Symbolizes the struggle for power that was costantly waged between the ecclesiastical and temporal rules of Catania, between priests and patricians, and this is another facet of the city’s Baroque character. This arch across Via Crociferi that was at the centre of such passionate strife was erected against the wishes of the city’s senate in 1704, in a single night, at the behest of Catania’s bishop,Monsignor Andrea Reggio, who played a vital part in the rebuilding of Catania and held office without making even the slightest concession to the secular authorities until 1713, when he left the city. The writer Guglielmo Policastro gives this narration of the events. "During the time of Abbess Maristella Motta, from 1702 to 1704, designs were commissioned from Alonzio di Benedetto for the new convent, on which work began on 17 April. When the building of the large arch was started, resting against the corner of the monastery on the western side of the street, the senators of the quarter and the trustees of the city’s religious buildings protested. Bishop Reggio intervened, and hearings were held before a royal court, which terminated in June 1703 and cost 24 unciae. The arch was built, and after this, in the period of Abbess Ignazia Asmundo (1704-7), work was started on the new church. " The highlight of Via Crociferi in artistic terms is the San Giuliano Church, a masterpiece of 18th-century religious architecture. The church has a curvilinear facade and is built to an elliptical plan inspired by Borromini, with the main altar in the highest Baroque style and a splendid polycrome floor. The monastery of the Benedictines, San Nicolò, is the most precious example of Catania’s Baroque buildings. The facade of this monumental buildings features rusticated pilaster-strips enclosing balconies framed by exuberant corbels replete with elaborate carvings. Palazzo Biscari is a jewel of 18th-century secular architecture, with remarkable exterior embellishments running for over 160 metres of the 16th-century walls of the city facing onto the harbour. Inside is a finely decorated reception hall, with a delightful Rococo stairway. There are many other interesting buildings to see in Catania, but the city’s province also boasts a splendid heritage of Baroque treasures. Acireale has many examples of Baroque, like the ribvaulted bell tower of the Santa Maria del Carmelo Church, the facade of San Sebastiano Church, with its elegant balustrade supporting ten statues of prophets and other biblical figures, the portal of Santa Maddalena built in lava rock, the Santi Pietro e Paolo Church, the Town Hall, the Loggia Giuratoria with its small duckbreasted balconies carried on intricately carved corbels, started in 1659 and completed between 1819 and 1863, and the Cathedral, neo-gothic in appearance, with its pointed bell towers and octagonal dome. In several churches there are paintings and frescoes by Pietro Paolo Vasta, a local painter and architect. Baroque also displays itself in colours, in the white and black of lava rock and the clear stone of Comiso that alternate with the grey rendering made from volcanic dust, or with portals and cornices, as in the Chiesa Madre Church at Viagrande and in that of Trecastagni. Baroque is enlivened by the bright colours of ceramics and majolica at Caltagirone, which boasts splendid churches like those of San Giacomo, San Francesco d’ Assisi, Santa Maria del Monte, Santa Chiara and San Giuseppe, and the Collegio dei Gesuiti Church. This is the religious side of Baroque, but certainly of no lesser interest are the many villas built as summer residences in the late 17th and 18th centuries, such as Villa Crescimanno d’Albafiorita, Palazzo Libertini di San Marco, Villa Chiaranda, Villa Libertini Spadaro, Villa Speciale-Scebba and Villa Gravina di Montevago. In the heart of the land of novelist Giovanni Verga we find Vizzini, with its many mansions of the rich and aristocratic (including the writer’s family home) and churches. Of particular interest is the Chiesa Madre di San Gregorio Magno. Grammichele, built to a hexagonal plan after the destruction of Occhiolà, is an extraordinary town that still conserves much of its original layout despite extensive changes made at the end of the 19th century. Sited in the valley plain instead of on the hill like the previous settlement, the construction of the new town was entrusted to architect Michele La Ferla, a member of the Friars Minor Observant, working to designs by Carlo Maria Carafa, Prince of Butera, who on his estate of Gran Michele applied the architecture adopted for the town of Palmanova in 1593. One particularly fine church is the Chiesa Madre di San Michele (1723-65). Licodia Eubea, seriously damaged in the 1693 earthquake, was rebuilt on the same site, and many traces of Baroque influence can be seen, for example in the Palazzo Municipale and the Chiesa del Rosario Church. Mineo, the birthplace of writer Luigi Capuana, offers the apses of a 14th-century church destroyed in the 1693 earthquake and then rebuilt, and the Sant’Agrippina Parish Church, which is the twin of the San Pietro Church, also rebuilt after 1693. Militello in Val di Catania has many Baroque buildings both religious and secular, ranging from the San Francesco di Paola Church to the Palazzo Baldanza-Denaro, from the Chiesa Madre to the Palazzo Reforgiato, and from the Maria Santissima della Stella Church to the Town Hall, sited in a for-mer Benedictine monastery completed in 1649.

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