Modica

A UNESCO registered town.
The perfect place for a passegiata (promenade) and window shopping, life here is very Italian in style. Destroyed twice and rebuilt in a style so as not to delete the history of the town this has left much to be explored and discovered.
The chocolate made here is made to the recipe of the aztecs, surely worth sampling.

Main sights
As the city developed it gradually became divided into "Modica Alta" (Upper Modica) and "Modica Bassa" (Lower Modica). During the last century the city has extended and developed new suburbs which include Sacro Cuore (or "Sorda"), Monserrato, Idria, these are often referred to as Modern Modica; both old and modern quarters of the city are today joined by one of Europe's higher bridge, the Guerrieri bridge (300 m).

Despite being ravaged by earthquakes in 1613 and 1693 and floods in 1833 and 1902, Modica has maintained some of the most beautiful architecture in Sicily, in the Sicilian Baroque style. The city possesses a large Baroque Cathedral dedicated to San Giorgio. While the cathedral was rebuilt following the earthquake of 1693, like many other parts of the city its roots are in the Middle Ages.

There is another important church dedicated to San Pietro in Modica Bassa, featuring a principal façade crowned by a typical Sicilian Baroque belltower 49 m in height.
Other sights include:
Castello dei Conti (Castle)
Chiesa del Carmine
Church of St. Mary of Betlehem
Garibaldi Theater

Economy
The economy of the area once principally agricultural producing olives, carobs, legumes, cereals, and cattle; an extraordinary and unique product is the famous chocolate of Modica, produced with an ancient and original Aztec recipe. The city has now been joined by factories producing textiles, furniture and cars. Tourism is also an important industry to the area, since Modica entered the UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2002.

Culture
The eighteenth century saw Modica in the role of art and culture town, counting philosophers (Tommaso Campailla), poets (Girolama Grimaldi Lorefice), a school of medicine (Campailla, Gaspare Cannata, Michele Gallo, the Polara family) and literary academies amongst its inhabitants. In the nineteenth century, feudalism was abolished and Modica became a "bourgeois" town peopled by notables such as the writer and anthropologist Serafino Amabile Guastella, the agronomist Clemente Grimaldi, the musician Pietro Floridia and many painters, historians and other intellectuals.
Modica was also the birth place of writer Salvatore Quasimodo, recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1959.