Noto
UNESCO World Heritage Site (Late Baroque Towns Of The Val Di Noto, Inscribed 2002), A Town Rebuilt From Nothing On A New Site After The 1693 Earthquake · Noto, Sicily
An earthquake flattened this corner of Sicily in 1693, and rather than rebuild where they were, the survivors moved Noto ten kilometres downhill and started again from nothing on a grid. What went up over the following century is a whole town built at one time, in one style, out of one stone, which almost nowhere else in Europe can say. The stone is a soft local limestone that has weathered to a deep honey colour and turns almost orange in late sun, and the main street is a sequence of church fronts and palace balconies held up by carved horses, griffins and grotesque faces. The cathedral dome collapsed in 1996 and took ten years to rebuild, so what you are looking at is partly modern work done properly. It is small enough to walk in an afternoon, half an hour from Syracuse, and best seen either early or in the last hour of light when the whole street goes gold. At midday it is pale and flat and visitors stand about wondering what the fuss was supposed to be about.
Corso Vittorio Emanuele, Noto, Sicily, 96017, Italy
NO OPENING TIME HERE WAS CHECKED. The structure: the Corso, the squares and the cathedral staircase are public and never close. Churches open daily with a LONG early-afternoon interval, shorter hours in winter, and several small ones are shut indefinitely. Bell towers and palace interiors keep short, irregular hours and take cash at the door. Noto Antica is open ground with no gate and no staff. The Infiorata occupies Via Nicolaci for several days in the third week of May. Confirm anything you intend to enter.