This day was a personal highlight. We drove to Modica, a small town on the top of a hill best known for its unusual, grainy chocolate. Like many of the towns we visited, Modica has been under the rule of Greeks, Arabs and Romans, and the influence of each group is still visible. We ran up the hundreds of stone steps to the center of Modica Alta, where we had an amazing view of the valley, Modica Bassa and the ocean. At the top of the steps is a baroque cathedral, the duomo di San Giorgio, and a maize of cobblestone streets. We learned that in the nineteenth century aristocrats from the surrounding area moved to Modica Alta, pushing the less wealthy to Modica Bassa.

We left Modica for Noto, a baroque town that was almost completely rebuilt in the nineteenth century and again following an earthquake in the 1990s. Unlike Modica, Noto was crowded with tourists. We visited the duomo, which was ornate and white in the Sicilian baroque, a stark departure from the decadent gold mosaics of the cappella palatina.

On our way out of Porto Empedocle we stopped to see the town’s statue of the commissario Montalbano, a character from Camilleri’s novels and a television series, and to have coffee at the character’s favorite bar. The town of Porto Empedocle plays a large role in the Montalbano films we’ve seen, and we were excited to see it in person. We took pictures with the statue of the commissioner and admired the artwork in the piazza inspired by Camilleri’s writing. Our sunny morning in this town was a great way to start one of our biggest days of the trip: the Valle dei Templi, with some of the most important and best preserved Greek temples in Sicily.

Day three was a special one.

  Here’s a photo from our fantastic excursion to Segesta, where we saw a beautiful Doric temple — my first Greek temple, in fact. We cooed at stray dogs while Professor Boyd showered us with knowledge and teased out the eccentricities of this particular temple (columns not fluted! weird lifting nubs still visible!).
We then walked through the rolling hills to the Greek (and then Roman) amphitheater that overlooks the sea, and I was always looking back to see the temple from afar. Although the Greeks were sometimes  overcompetetive and overambitious about it, the architecture of these temples always makes sense — strong, simple, and imposing. It was a quiet area, the hills were green and overgrown, and the from far away it was hard to see the temple’s centuries of wear — we were seeing views that were almost exactly what the Greeks used to see. The inspiration and power of the temple was obvious, as was its subtlety and willingness to work with its natural surroundings.  –AG