When the earthquake of 1693 flattened the Val di Noto, the Chiesa del Carmine was one of the few monuments in Modica left standing. Built between the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries as Santa Maria dell'Annunziata, it keeps a piece of medieval Modica that has been lost elsewhere: its late-Gothic portal, declared a national monument as early as the start of the twentieth century, is the calling card of a building that has weathered three earthquakes.
What to see
The late-fourteenth-century portal, in the Chiaramonte late-Gothic style, is crowned by a Franciscan rose window with twelve rays; the upper parts of the façade and the bell tower are instead eighteenth-century Baroque rebuildings. Inside awaits a small treasury of art: the marble Annunciation group by Antonello Gagini, delivered to the Carmelites in 1532, and the panel of Saint Albert painted between 1513 and 1517 by Cesare da Sesto, a pupil of Leonardo da Vinci. In the entrance hall is a rare fourteenth-century Madonna del latte in papier-mâché, contemporary with the church, while above the door stands the oldest still-working organ in Modica, dated 1774. Beside the altar, a recently uncovered late-Gothic chapel shows traces of frescoes and hides, beneath its floor, a burial crypt.
Visiting
The church still holds its most recent discoveries: in 2006, during works in an adjoining space, another late-fourteenth-century Gothic portal came to light along with a crypt full of bones, likely the remains of the Carmelite monks. It is a building that keeps, quite literally, giving back pieces of its past.
Our editors' tip
Pause at the portal before going in: that lacework of stone is what the 1693 earthquake failed to destroy, and on its own it tells of the vanished Gothic Modica. Inside, look for Gagini's Annunciation: it is among the finest Renaissance sculptures in the town.
