The art historian Maurizio Fagiolo dell'Arco once suggested it belongs among “the seven wonders of the baroque world”: the Duomo di San Giorgio is the mother church of Modica and the most theatrical emblem of Sicilian Baroque, listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. A church dedicated to Saint George is already recorded here in a bull of Pope Eugene III from 1150, and its first foundation is traced to Count Roger of Hauteville, around 1090. The building we see today, though, is the product of the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century rebuilding that followed the earthquakes of 1542, 1613 and above all 1693, the catastrophic Val di Noto quake.
What to see
Everything is dominated by the tower façade, 62 metres tall: work on its first order began in 1702 and finished in 1738, while the crowning iron cross on the spire arrived only in 1842. The lower orders are attributed to Rosario Gagliardi, one of the leading European architects of the eighteenth century, and their design even inspired the façade of Dresden Cathedral, completed in 1753. The third order was raised by the Noto architect Làbisi by 1780; the crown and spire are the work of Carmelo Cultraro, from Ragusa, between 1841 and 1842. A dramatic staircase of 181 steps, its upper stretch designed by the Jesuit Francesco Di Marco in 1814, climbs to the five portals, which announce the five interior naves: the plan is basilican, a Latin cross with three apses beyond the transept. At the centre, the dome rises 36 metres.
Visiting
The climb is part of the visit: the monumental staircase, its lower section completed only in 1880 to a design by Alessandro Cappellani Judica, lifts your eye from the Corso up to the portals. Inside, the five naves and three apses give this mother church its unusual scale; it had been raised to a collegiate church as early as 1630 by a bull of Urban VIII. Services here, the building's history notes, barely ever stopped — not even after the roofs collapsed in 1693.
Our editors' tip
Take the time to climb all 181 steps and turn round halfway: it is from there that the tower façade shows its full height. It is worth pairing the visit with the Duomo di San Pietro, Modica's other mother church: the centuries-long rivalry between the “Giorgesi” and the “Pietresi”, settled only by a royal decree in 1797, tells you a great deal about this proud, divided town.