The forgotten baroque gem — a hilltop town of golden palaces and Montalbano sets in Sicily's Val di Noto
Scicli is a small Baroque city in the Val di Noto in southeastern Sicily, part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site covering eight Late Baroque towns. Built on three hills above a valley, it features a spectacular hillscape of palaces, churches, and cave dwellings. Scicli gained unexpected international fame as the fictional Vigàta of the popular Italian detective series 'Il Commissario Montalbano', bringing fans of the series to what is otherwise one of Sicily's least-visited Baroque towns.
Scicli's original settlement was on the Colle San Matteo — a hilltop fortified in Byzantine and Arab times before the Norman conquest of Sicily in 1091. The city was partially destroyed in the catastrophic 1693 earthquake that devastated the eastern Val di Noto, and the subsequent rebuilding in the Late Baroque style (1693–1750s) created the architectural ensemble that UNESCO inscribed in 2002. Unlike more touristed Noto and Ragusa, Scicli was long overlooked; its adoption by the Montalbano series as filming locations has created a gentle wave of literary tourism without overwhelming the town.