Scicli

Scicli presents itself as an intricate stone theatre backdrop, a UNESCO World Heritage site since 2002 as one of the high points of late baroque in the Val di Noto; but that baroque was born of a double tragedy. In January 1626 the plague cut the population from eleven thousand to about four thousand, nearly two thirds lost; and the earthquake of January 1693 killed roughly three thousand people out of nine thousand, destroying much of the town. From those ruins Scicli was reborn in the forms admired today, with eighteenth-century noble palaces such as Spadaro, Beneventano and Fava.

The legend dearest to the town, though, tells of another battle, against Saracens led by an emir named Belcane: in 1091, tradition says, the Virgin Mary rode into the field on a white horse, armed with a sabre, to defend mea civitas dilecta, my beloved city, and the Christians won thanks to her. The little church of the Madonna delle Milizie was built on the very site of the battle, and every year a feast still commemorates it as one of Scicli's most heartfelt rites. On the town's coat of arms, three hills topped by a lion: some read them as the three heights on which the old town stands, others as a memory of Hercules passing through, the lion recalling that of Nemea. In 1860 Scicli was the first town in Sicily, and in the whole south, to proclaim by plebiscite its annexation to Piedmont.