Amidst all its uneven, Baroque splendor, Modica is everything about chocolate. Antica Dolceria Bonajuto along Corso Umberto is Sicily’s earliest chocolate factory– the chocolate here is dark, highly flavoured and crumbly instead of smooth.
Scicli seems like a Noto or Modica diminished in the wash– quieter, less travelers, more stringent siesta code– though its bejewelled palazzos still whisper tales of a thumping flourishing age, their windows’ stucco eyebrows falling apart, their exteriors mottled with age. Underneath them lie little cannoli shops, pocket-sized antique stores and movie places for Inspector Montalbano.
Ragusa Ibla keeps up the Baroque style however feels closer to scenes from a Hans Anderson tale, with pastel-pink homes, little Sicilian puppet theatres, wood toy stores and misty views over the Hyblaean mountains from the old town’s swirly, wrought iron verandas.
Scala dei Turchi, Sicily Getty Images
Beaches
Sicily’s beaches can baffle travelers anticipating limitless stretches of bone-white sand. They are more than frequently flanked by fantastic hunks of warm concrete, pebbly, rocky and where sandy, smothered in those retro, weak sun loungers you believed were restricted to the ’70s. While periodically insufferably hot throughout summertime’s peak, dotted throughout 930 miles of shoreline, Sicily’s beaches are favorably charming from spring to late fall The Sicilian method is to lie, like seals, stretched along the rocks with a towel and a cold beer before coming down quickly into extreme tones of blue. Scopello wins the majority of beach appeal contests, with its dirty pink inn blinking over a calm bay through lace and weathered shutters. Scala dei Turchi (the ‘Turkish actions’) is more of a geological head-turner, with its rippled development and moonscape appeal, as are the Aeolian and Aegean Islands’ beaches, primarily pebbled or framing the impossibly blue plunge areas with rugged rock. For something softer, Sampiere off the Baroque, South East coast, or Lungomare di Cefalù an hour from Palermo, are all blonde sands, icy Coca-Cola bottles and velvety gelato.