Modica

Modica fills a pair of ravines in the Hyblaean hills of southeastern Sicily, where two streams join to form the Modicano, whose water turned twenty-three mills between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries. For centuries it was the capital of the county of Modica, one of the most powerful lordships on the island. Under the Chiaramonte the county grew, and in 1361 Frederick IV of Sicily gave it a Gran Corte with supreme criminal jurisdiction like that of Palermo.

In 1392 Martin I invested the Cabrera, and Modica gained such judicial independence that it was called a kingdom within the kingdom. On 15 August 1474 a mob stormed the Jewish quarter of Cartellone shouting 'Long live Mary and death to the Jews', and killed about 360 people. After the Cabrera died out the county passed to the Enríquez-Cabrera, and later to the Alvarez de Toledo and the Fitz-James Stuart. Earthquakes in 1542 and 1613 and above all the great quake of 1693 destroyed much of the city. The rebuilt San Giorgio cathedral, whose tower façade began rising in 1702, became the finest monument of Sicilian Baroque in the south-east. The feudal order was abolished in 1812 and the county dissolved in 1816.