Amid all its hilly, Baroque glory, Modica is all about chocolate. Antica Dolceria Bonajuto along Corso Umberto is Sicily’s oldest chocolate factory – the chocolate here is dark, richly flavoured and crumbly rather than smooth.
Scicli feels like a Noto or Modica shrunk in the wash – quieter, fewer tourists, stricter siesta code – though its bejewelled palazzos still whisper tales of a thumping prosperous age, their windows’ stucco brows crumbling, their facades mottled with age. Beneath them lie little cannoli boutiques, pocket-sized antique shops and film locations for Inspector Montalbano.
Ragusa Ibla runs with the Baroque theme but feels closer to scenes from a Hans Anderson tale, with pastel-pink houses, little Sicilian puppet theatres, wooden toy shops and misty views over the Hyblaean mountains from the old town’s swirly, wrought iron balconies.
Scala dei Turchi, SicilyGetty Images
Beaches
Sicily’s beaches can baffle tourists expecting endless stretches of bone-white sand. They are more than often flanked by great hunks of warm concrete, pebbly, rocky and where sandy, smothered in those retro, rickety sun loungers you thought were confined to the ’70s. While occasionally insufferably hot during summer’s peak, dotted across 930 miles of coastline, Sicily’s beaches are positively lovely from spring to late autumn. The Sicilian way is to lie, like seals, sprawled along the rocks with a towel and a cold beer before descending abruptly into intense shades of blue. Scopello wins most beach beauty contests, with its dusty pink inn blinking over a calm bay through lace and weathered shutters. Scala dei Turchi (the ‘Turkish steps’) is more of a geological head-turner, with its rippled formation and moonscape appeal, as are the Aeolian and Aegean Islands’ beaches, mostly pebbled or framing the impossibly blue plunge spots with jagged 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 creamy gelato.