Late Baroque Towns of the Val di Noto
Wednesday, 11 February 2015 - 01:00 pm (CET/MEZ) Berlin | Author/Destination: European Union / Europäische Union Category/Kategorie: General , Palaces, Castles, Manors, Parks , UNESCO World Heritage
Reading Time: 5 minutes
Catania – Cathedral Sant’ Agata © Berthold Werner/cc-by-sa-3.0
🔊 Listen to this Post
Val di Noto is a geographical area of south east Sicily; it is dominated by the limestone
Iblean plateau . The Val di Noto owes its fame to the reconstruction which underwent after the year 1693, when the entire area was decimated by an enormous earthquake. Following the earthquake, many towns were rebuilt on entirely new sites, such as
Noto and
Grammichele . The rulers of the time, the kings of Spain, accounted the nobleman
Giuseppe Lanza with special powers, which allowed him to redesign the damaged towns based on rational and scenographic town plans.
In fact, since the beginning of the Renaissance, architects had the dream to build an entirely new ideal city, where town planning follows rational design and streets and buildings are organized by functionality and beauty. However, only a very small part of their projects were really used, and most of them were limited to the reorganization of a street, like the Strada Nuova in Florence or the redesign of small villages, like the town of Pienza .
Militello in Val di Catania - Santa Maria della Stella © Gmelfi
The earthquake gave the architects the chance to carry out those plans on a large scale. These new towns and cities were therefore redesigned according to renaissance and baroque town planning, with streets crossing each other either in a right angle or starting from major urban sites like squares with a radial pattern. Major buildings like churches, cloisters and palaces were built in order to give the streets a focal point and a majestic perspective. Many of these towns had a distinct shape, like the town of Grammichele which is based on a hexagon whose centre is the town square, consisting of the parish and town hall. Another feature is the homogeneous structure of these towns, as the late baroque style developed in Sicily was extensively used in the rebuilding. The area’s towns were rebuilt in what came to be known as the
Sicilian Baroque style; most notable the town of Noto itself, which is now a tourist attraction on account of its fine
Baroque architecture.
In June 2002, UNESCO inscribed eight old towns of the Val di Noto on the World Heritage List as “representing the culmination and final flowering of Baroque art in Europe”. The listed towns are
Caltagirone ,
Militello in Val di Catania ,
Catania ,
Modica ,
Noto ,
Palazzolo Acreide ,
Ragusa , and
Scicli .
Read more on
unesco.org – Val di Noto ,
italia.it – Val di Noto ,
ValDiNoto.com and
Wikipedia Val di Noto (
Smart Traveler App by U.S. Department of State -
Weather report by weather.com -
Johns Hopkins University & Medicine - Coronavirus Resource Center -
Global Passport Power Rank -
Democracy Index -
GDP according to IMF, UN, and World Bank -
Global Competitiveness Report -
Corruption Perceptions Index -
Press Freedom Index -
World Justice Project - Rule of Law Index -
UN Human Development Index -
Global Peace Index -
Travel & Tourism Competitiveness Index ). Photos by Wikimedia Commons. If you have a suggestion, critique, review or comment to this blog entry, we are looking forward to receive your e-mail at
comment@wingsch.net . Please name the headline of the blog post to which your e-mail refers to in the subject line.
Recommended posts:
[caption id="attachment_165230" align="aligncenter" width="590"] © flickr.com - slgckgc/cc-by-2.0[/caption][responsivevoice_button voice="UK English Female" buttontext="Listen to this Post"]MS Anthem of the Seas is a cruise ship operated by Royal Caribbean International (RCI). She is the second ship of the Quantum class, which surpasses the earlier Freedom-class ships by over 14,000 GT, becoming the second largest class of passenger ships behind RCI's Oasis class ships on a gross tonnage basis. On February 11, 2011, Royal Caribbean announced that they had ordered a new class of ships from the...
[ read more ]
[caption id="attachment_168181" align="aligncenter" width="590"] © Patrick Wernhardt/cc-by-sa-3.0[/caption][responsivevoice_button voice="UK English Female" buttontext="Listen to this Post"]Dar Młodzieży (Polish: Gift of the Youth) is a Polish sail training ship designed by Zygmunt Choreń. A prototype of a class of six, the following five slightly-differing units were built subsequently by the same shipyard for the merchant fleet of the former Soviet Union. Her sister ships are Mir, Druzhba, Pallada, Khersones and Nadezhda.
[gallery size="medium" gss="1" ids="168179,168180,168181"]Th...
[ read more ]
[caption id="attachment_203325" align="aligncenter" width="590"] © flickr.com - Doc Searls/cc-by-sa-2.0[/caption][responsivevoice_button voice="UK English Female" buttontext="Listen to this Post"]The Hunts Point Cooperative Market, a 24/7 wholesale food market located on 60 acres (24 ha) in the Hunts Point neighborhood of the Bronx, New York City, is the largest food distribution center of its kind in the world. Its revenues exceed $2 billion annually.
Located at the Hunts Point Food Distribution Center, which houses the Fulton Fish Market and a produce market, the Hunts Point Coopera...
[ read more ]
[caption id="attachment_154375" align="aligncenter" width="415"] Town Hall © Martinp1[/caption][responsivevoice_button voice="UK English Female" buttontext="Listen to this Post"]Dunkirk is a commune in the Nord department in northern France. It lies 10 kilometres (6.2 mi) from the Belgian border. The population of the city at the 1999 census was 70,850 inhabitants (71,300 inhabitants as per February 2004 estimates). The population of the metropolitan area was 265,974 inhabitants as per the 1999 census.
Dunkirk has the third-largest harbour in France, after those of Le Havre and Marsei...
[ read more ]
[caption id="attachment_172147" align="aligncenter" width="590"] Nippon Maru Memorial Park © Captain76/cc-by-sa-3.0[/caption][responsivevoice_button voice="UK English Female" buttontext="Listen to this Post"]Nippon Maru is a Japanese museum ship and former training vessel. She is permanently docked in Yokohama harbor, in Nippon Maru Memorial Park. She was built by Kawasaki Shipbuilding Corporation in Kobe, and was launched on 27 January 1930 alongside her sister ship Kaiwo Maru.
She was operated by the Tokyo Institute for Maritime Training to train officers for Japan's merchant marine...
[ read more ]
[caption id="attachment_216280" align="aligncenter" width="590"] Marina at Macau Fisherman's Wharf © Mfwmarketing/cc-by-sa-4.0[/caption][responsivevoice_button voice="UK English Female" buttontext="Listen to this Post"]Macau, also spelled Macao and officially the Macao Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China, is a city and special administrative region of the People's Republic of China in the western Pearl River Delta by the South China Sea. With a population of about 650,000 and an area of 32.9 km² (12.7 sq mi), it is the most densely populated region in the world. M...
[ read more ]
[caption id="attachment_151899" align="aligncenter" width="590"] Jardin du Palais du Luxembourg © Dinkum[/caption][responsivevoice_button voice="UK English Female" buttontext="Listen to this Post"]The 6th arrondissement includes world famous educational institutions such as the École des Beaux-Arts de Paris and the Académie française, the seat of the French Senate as well as a concentration of some of Paris most famous monuments such as Saint-Germain Abbey and square, St. Sulpice Church and square, the Pont des Arts or the Jardins du Luxembourg.
Situated on the left bank of the Riv...
[ read more ]
[caption id="attachment_200811" align="aligncenter" width="590"] Hampton Court Palace © flickr.com - Duncan Harris/cc-by-2.0[/caption][responsivevoice_button voice="UK English Female" buttontext="Listen to this Post"]Hampton Court Palace is a royal palace in the borough of Richmond upon Thames, 12 miles (19.3 kilometres) south west and upstream of central London on the River Thames. Building of the palace began in 1515 for Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, a favourite of King Henry VIII. In 1529, as Wolsey fell from favour, the cardinal gave the palace to the King to check his disgrace; Henry VIII late...
[ read more ]
[caption id="attachment_230584" align="aligncenter" width="590"] Camarillo Ranch House © Los Angeles/cc-by-sa-3.0[/caption][responsivevoice_button voice="UK English Female" buttontext="Listen to this Post"]Camarillo is a city in Ventura County in the U.S. state of California. As of the 2010 United States Census, the population was 65,201, an increase of 8,117 from the 57,084 counted in the 2000 Census. Camarillo is named for brothers Juan and Adolfo Camarillo, prominent Californios who owned Rancho Calleguas and founded the city. The city is home to California State University, Channel Island...
[ read more ]
[caption id="attachment_234655" align="aligncenter" width="590"] Main church 'Nativity of the Virgin Mother' © Daniel Petrov/cc-by-sa-4.0[/caption][responsivevoice_button voice="UK English Female" buttontext="Listen to this Post"]The Monastery of Saint John of Rila, also known as Rila Monastery "Sveti Ivan Rilski", is the largest and most famous Eastern Orthodox monastery in Bulgaria. It is situated in the southwestern Rila Mountains, 117 km (73 mi) south of the capital Sofia in the deep valley of the Rilska River ("Rila River") at an elevation of 1,147 m (3,763 ft) above sea level, inside of...
[ read more ]