The story of Modica
You can feel the spirit of Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa in Modica, in the grand 18th and 19th century palaces which flank the high street, the Corso Umberto I. The street of palaces carves the town in half. It snakes down the valley bed, and on each side, simple brown-gold houses climb the valley walls, linked by stepped lanes and twisting alleys. Each of them once home to just one family, these vast palaces are divided into as many as 20 apartments, their fabulous facades crumbling. The faces of elaborately carved gargoyles and angels on doorways and balconies are eroded by time and blackened by pollution. The once-private entrance halls are thrown open to the street, the courtyards crammed with cars, paint peeling off the walls of their echoing grand stairwells. Other palazzi are empty, their shuttered windows enclosing the stories of lives long gone, and a way of life that passed into history as di Lampedusa described in Il Gattopardo, his lament for the Sicily that disappeared with the Risorgimento and the end of Bourbon rule. The demise of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies in the mid-19th century spelled the beginning of the end for these grand houses and the even grander families that sustained them.
Modica has an important history, and the curious legacy of this, besides the splendid architecture of its noble dwellings, is in its chocolate-making. Chocolate was once only for the truly wealthy. It was made and sold where there were aristocratic homes to buy it. Even before chocolate, Modica was the capital of an important county. In 1296, King Frederick I of Aragon conceded the County of Modica to Manfredi Chiaramonte, who made the town the capital of his feudal realm, controlling through it the whole of the southern third of Sicily. This was the greatest chapter in its history. The Spanish families who took over the earldom of Modica after the Chiaramonte used their vast estates there to support their way of life in Spain. They were regarded largely as plunderers. Then the great earthquake of 1693 destroyed most of the town, and it was rebuilt, which accounts for the baroque architecture of the palaces. But Modica had lost its importance.
Today, it is a quiet town, a place where visitors come to look at the grand architecture, as they do in neighbouring Noto. Yet its proud traditions persist. Our hosts Giorgio Ruta and Valeria Cannata go out of their way to show us the best of Modica’s food traditions – and as with chocolate, these too are the legacy of a more indolent past when bevies of servants busied themselves in vast kitchens, and the padrona di casa discussed the day’s menus with her cook. Yet they elicit the same reaction now that they must have then: a sense of wonderment that anything could taste so good, and curiosity as to how the pairing of certain ingredients came about.
Valeria and Giorgio showed us simpler food traditions, too – how ricotta was made in the home, how families stew pork for Sunday lunch and spoon the sauce over ravioli which they make themselves – filled with ricotta, of course – and how many meals are a tantalising spread of different dishes, all laid out on the table at once, so that the antipasto becomes the entire meal: courgettes with salt tuna, scacce, pastry rings stuffed with meat, cheeses and cured meats, wild asparagus.
We visited the home of Giorgio Avola and Concetta Gurdanella, who have been making their highly-rated Furgentini olive oil for decades. Giorgio speaks with pride about what he does; his oil has won awards. Olive oil, as with the rest of Sicily, is the key to the Modica kitchen. And so is ricotta, which is used extensively and spoken of with pride.
The vast flight of steps that reaches the church was a superb achievement for the time.At the Hosteria di San Benedetto, where we repair for one of the largest and longest lunches that I have eaten in a long time, Bartolo Tuala and his mother Francesca Garofolo bring what seem to be legions of different little dishes to our table. In situations like this, saying "No more for me, thanks" begins to seem more of a vice than a virtue. Fresh vegetables dipped in batter and rapidly fried, dates filled with meat soaked in Marsala, fritters of this and that - all came and vanished. Bartolo puts one of our party straight on inaccurate Italian: sauce isn’t just sauce; ragu is always a meat sauce, sugo never is, and he makes it by dissolving stratta – a tomato preserve on the same lines as kunserva, but dried to a solid block – in red wine. He is the one who explains to us that cows’ milk dominates, rather than sheep’s milk, for cheese-making. We never found out why, and we didn’t see many sheep, either – and no goats at all. Giorgio Ruta tells us that goats were and still are persona non grata in the area, because they eat everything in their path, including the shoots of young trees. Ah, so that’s what went wrong with Malta.
On our way back, we visited the home of a friend of the Rutas, Pietro Lorefice, at the Contrada San Giunguzzo. We wanted to go there because he keeps the black pigs that we had eaten for lunch, and we wished to know what they look like. They are nothing like the pigs we eat for Sunday lunch in our own home – small, slim things and jet black, with striped piglets. They roam wild, apparently, in the range of tall hills between Messina and Catania. Pietro keeps animals as a hobby, caring for them around his day job. He brings out a bottle of beautiful Moscato, and we break our promise to ourselves and finish the lot.
The wars of the two churches
The story of Modica’s warring churches is one that has the ring of familiarity. The 17th-century Church of St Peter was badly damaged in the 1693 earthquake, but was rebuilt with a generous legacy from two noblewomen, Petra Mazzara and Agata Caggia, who wished to see it win the contest for the new status of Cathedral of Modica, against the rival Church of St George. And win it did. The Church of St George may have lost the battle, but it is one of the most important architectural masterpieces in Modica. It was rebuilt after the 1693 earthquake, the terremoto having favoured neither church. Its design served as the prototype for other 18th-century churches in the region. The vast flight of steps that reaches it was a superb achievement for the time.
Along the walls in the streets between the two churches, you can still see traces of the stones that delineated the limite delle due Matrici. They marked the border between the ‘territories’ of the two churches. Pampaluni of St George could not cross into the territory of pampaluni of St Peter, and vice versa, during processions on feast days – otherwise bloody fights would break out.
How to get there
Take the catamaran ferry service to Pozzallo, and take your car with you. Modica is in the province of Ragusa, which includes the baroque city of Noto and Ragusa itself. This is the kind of area where you must have a car to get around, because you cannot stay in one place too long. Modica is a three-hour drive, sometimes in heavy traffic, from Catania airport. Public transport is not as it is in cities on the European mainland, so to get to Modica from Catania you will have to hire a car – and you will need one when there in any case. The catamaran is by far the more practical choice and a much less expensive one too.