Italy Guide
Sicily
Noto
NOTO, half an hour by train or bus from Siracusa, is easily the most harmonious town of those rebuilt after the earthquake, and during the mid-nineteenth century, it replaced Siracusa as provincial capital. Planned and laid out by Giovanni Battista Landolina and adorned by Gagliardi, there's not a town to touch Noto for uniform excellence in design and execution. Each year more monuments are restored, regaining their original honey-coloured facades, and each year more tour groups visit.
The pedestrianized main Corso is lined with some of Sicily's most captivating buildings, from the flat-fronted church of San Francesco, on the right, along as far as Piazza XVI Maggio and the graceful, curving church of San Domenico. And Piazza Municipio is arguably Sicily's finest piazza with its perfectly proportioned, tree-planted expanses. The Duomo, a fine example of Baroque at its most muscular and finished in 1770, has reopened following the collapse of its dome in 1996. Opposite, the Municipio (or Palazzo Ducezio) is flanked by its own green spaces, the arcaded building presenting a lovely, simple facade of columns and long stone balconies. Head up the steep Via Corrado Nicolaci, an eighteenth-century street that contains the extraordinary Palazzo Villadorata at no. 18, its six balconies supported by a panoply of griffins, galloping horses and fat-cheeked cherubs.