Late Baroque Towns of the Val di Noto

Wednesday, 11 February 2015 - 01:00 pm (CET/MEZ) Berlin | Author/Destination:
Category/Kategorie: General, Palaces, Castles, Manors, Parks, UNESCO World Heritage
Reading Time:  4 minutes

Catania - Cathedral Sant' Agata © Berthold Werner/cc-by-sa-3.0

Catania – Cathedral Sant’ Agata © Berthold Werner/cc-by-sa-3.0

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.

Noto - Via Nicolaci © Urban/cc-by-sa-3.0 Militello in Val di Catania - Santa Maria della Stella © Gmelfi Noto - San Domenico © Urban/cc-by-sa-3.0 Catania - Basilica Collegiata © Berthold Werner/cc-by-sa-3.0 Catania - Cathedral Sant' Agata © Berthold Werner/cc-by-sa-3.0
<
>
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 - Global Passport Power Rank - Travel Risk Map - 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:

Share this post: (Please note data protection regulations before using buttons)

Castres in Occitania

Castres in Occitania

[caption id="attachment_242189" align="aligncenter" width="590"] © Vanbasten 23/cc-by-sa-3.0[/caption][responsivevoice_button voice="UK English Female" buttontext="Listen to this Post"]Castres (Castras in the Languedocian dialect of Occitan) is the sole subprefecture of the Tarn department in the O...

[ read more ]

The media city Hilversum

The media city Hilversum

[caption id="attachment_160555" align="aligncenter" width="590"] Main building of the Sonneheerdt estate © DennisM[/caption][responsivevoice_button voice="UK English Female" buttontext="Listen to this Post"]Hilversum is a municipality and a town in the province of North Holland. Located in the regi...

[ read more ]

Willemstad on Curaçao

Willemstad on Curaçao

[caption id="attachment_206066" align="aligncenter" width="590"] Penha Building from 1708 © Evandria/cc-by-sa-4.0[/caption][responsivevoice_button voice="UK English Female" buttontext="Listen to this Post"]Willemstad is the capital city of Curaçao, an island in the southern Caribbean Sea that form...

[ read more ]

Theme Week Munich - Munich loves you!

Theme Week Munich - Munich loves you!

[caption id="attachment_153367" align="aligncenter" width="590"] Munich Panorama © David Kostner[/caption][responsivevoice_button voice="UK English Female" buttontext="Listen to this Post"]Munich is the capital city of Bavaria (Bayern), Germany. It is located on the River Isar north of the Bavarian...

[ read more ]

Moulins in Auvergne

Moulins in Auvergne

[caption id="attachment_160785" align="aligncenter" width="590"] Moulins and Cathedral © Alphanumeric[/caption][responsivevoice_button voice="UK English Female" buttontext="Listen to this Post"]Moulins is a commune in central France, capital of the Allier department. Among its many tourist attracti...

[ read more ]

American Dream Meadowlands in East Rutherford

American Dream Meadowlands in East Rutherford

[caption id="attachment_239505" align="aligncenter" width="590"] © Dough4872/cc-by-sa-4.0[/caption][responsivevoice_button voice="UK English Female" buttontext="Listen to this Post"]American Dream Meadowlands is a large retail and entertainment complex in the Meadowlands Sports Complex in East Ruth...

[ read more ]

Theme Week Alentejo - Elvas

Theme Week Alentejo - Elvas

[caption id="attachment_233296" align="aligncenter" width="590"] © flickr.com - xiquinhosilva/cc-by-2.0[/caption][responsivevoice_button voice="UK English Female" buttontext="Listen to this Post"]Elvas is a Portuguese municipality, former episcopal city and frontier fortress of easternmost central ...

[ read more ]

Theme Week Umbria

Theme Week Umbria

[caption id="attachment_153273" align="aligncenter" width="590"] Pietralunga © Sauro Bartocci/cc-by-sa-3.0[/caption][responsivevoice_button voice="UK English Female" buttontext="Listen to this Post"]Umbria is a region of historic and modern central Italy. It is the only region having neither a coas...

[ read more ]

The Dockland building in Hamburg

The Dockland building in Hamburg

[caption id="attachment_153386" align="aligncenter" width="590"] © Dennis Siebert/cc-by-sa-3.0-de[/caption][responsivevoice_button voice="UK English Female" buttontext="Listen to this Post"]Like a ship sits the six-story office building on a plot of land, 40 meters out over the river Elbe in Hambur...

[ read more ]

Fort Lauderdale in Florida

Fort Lauderdale in Florida

[caption id="attachment_184679" align="aligncenter" width="590"] Fort Lauderdale Beach © Xanxz[/caption][responsivevoice_button voice="UK English Female" buttontext="Listen to this Post"]Fort Lauderdale is the county seat of Broward County, 28 miles (45 km) north of MiamiMiami, with a population of...

[ read more ]

Shangri-La City in Tibet

Shangri-La City in Tibet

[caption id="attachment_224324" align="aligncenter" width="590"] © flickr.com - Rod Waddington/cc-by-sa.2.0[/caption][responsivevoice_button voice="UK English Female" buttontext="Listen to this Post"]Shangri-La (Tibetan: Gyalthang) is a county-level city in Northwestern Yunnan Province, People's Re...

[ read more ]

The National Library of France

The National Library of France

[caption id="attachment_24395" align="aligncenter" width="590"] Paris - Bibliothèque nationale de France - site Richelieu-Louvois - Reading Room© flickr.com - Vincent Desjardins/cc-by-2.0[/caption][responsivevoice_button voice="UK English Female" buttontext="Listen to this Post"]The Bibliothèque ...

[ read more ]

Return to TopReturn to Top