The cross atop the spire of San Giovanni Evangelista, at 449 metres, is the highest point of Modica: from up here the mother church of upper Modica commands the old town. A place of worship has stood on this site since at least 1150, when it appears in a bull of Pope Eugene III, and here once rose the seventh-century San Pietro extra moenia, with one of the six monasteries founded in Sicily by Saint Gregory the Great.
What to see
The façade you see is late and theatrical: after the damage of the 1693 earthquake and then that of 1848, it was redrawn several times until the neoclassical dress of the late nineteenth century, completed between 1893 and 1901 and similar to the front of the Collegiata in Catania. Before it, a monumental staircase designed in 1839 by Salvatore Toscano descends toward the square, flanked by twenty-six pillars that once bore as many statues: only three remain today. Inside, rich in stuccos with the four Evangelists, is the sixteenth-century group of the Addolorata and, at the foot of Saint John's altar, an ark with the remains of the martyr Saint Temperance, brought here in the mid-seventeenth century.
Visiting
The church stands at the highest point of the old town: from its left flank a web of medieval alleys leads to the Belvedere del Pizzo, which commands the whole of Modica. It is the right place to end the climb from the lower town and enjoy the view.
Our editors' tip
Come up here at the end of the day: the staircase and the white façade catch the warm light, and the Belvedere del Pizzo, a step away, offers the widest view over the town. One detail to look for: the twenty-six pillars of the staircase, witnesses to a grand design never quite completed.
