Page 373 - The Rough Guide of Sicily

With the help of the Flemish military engineer Carlos de Grunemburg, Lanza devised

a revolutionary new plan, based on two gridded sections that were to be almost
completely separated from each other – a lower area for the political and religious
establishment, the upper town for the people. The best architects were to be used:
Vincenzo Sinatra, Paolo Labisi and the master craftsman Rosario Gagliardi – not

innovators, but men whose enthusiasm and experience enabled them to concoct a
graceful synthesis of the latest architectural skills and forms. Their collaboration was
so complete that it’s still difficult to ascribe some buildings to any one person. Within
an astonishingly short time the work was completed: a new city, planned with the
accent on symmetry and visual harmony, from its simple street plan to the lissom
figures adorning its buildings. It’s easily the most successful post-earthquake creation,
and, for a time, in the mid-nineteenth century, the new Noto replaced Siracusa as the
region’s provincial capital.

AMONG THE RUINS OF NOTO ANTICA

Until finally abandoned in 1693, the original town of Noto had several times been a

significant historical stronghold: one of the few Sicilian towns to resist the looting of
the Roman praetor Verres, it was also the last bastion of Arab Sicily before the
Norman conquest of the island. Only sparse remnants of the old town survive, but
Noto Antica makes a fascinating side-trip nonetheless. It’s 16km northwest of Noto,
signposted from the western end of the Corso in town (there’s no bus) – the turn-off
to the site is also that for the convent of Santa Maria delle Scale, with Noto Antica

another 5km past the convent. You park outside the surviving gate of the castle
(occupied from the eleventh to the seventeenth century), where renovation work has
rebuilt some of the circular tower. Early Christian catacombs honeycomb the rock
beneath the tumbled walls that line the valley cliff. An unsurfaced country lane
pushes on through the castle gate past the now-puzzling, completely overgrown

remains of an abandoned city – square-cut stone blocks, shattered arches, bramble-
covered courtyards and crumbling walls. If you come out here, you might as well
plan the day to take in the Cava Grande canyon, too, which is only another twenty
minutes’ drive away – back past the convent to the main road, turn left and look for
the signposted right turn.

Porta Reale

From the public gardens on the eastern side of town, the centre of Noto is approached
through the monumental Porta Reale, built in 1838 and topped by the three symbols of
the town’s allegiance to the Bourbon monarchy: a dog, a tower and a pelican
(respectively, loyalty, strength and sacrifice). The main Corso Vittorio Emanuele,

running from here through the heart of the lower, patricians’ quarter, is lined with