Itinerario 1

The County of Modica was one of the largest fiefdoms if not the largest in Sicily and the Jewish population, as a whole, was large. On the basis of a tax census dating back to 1492, it is estimated that the County housed about one twentieth of the entire Jewish population of the island calculated at around forty-eight thousand units.

Jews in Sicily were not forced to live in closed neighborhoods, known as ghettos, sharply separated from the Christian communities by walls of separation and doors that were closed at night. The isolation in which the Jewish communities lived within the Sicilian universitates arose from self-determination, to which the dictates of religion were not extraneous. In most of the cities of Sicily this isolation was realized in the election of a particular city district as the seat of the Jewish community.

In Modica, the Cartellone district was inhabited almost exclusively by Jews. The ruins of a synagogue were still visible at the end of the 19th century. Now they have disappeared but the toponym still exists. Many hypotheses have been made about the meaning and origin of the name of the neighborhood. One of the hypotheses, less probable, has it that the Cartellone took its name from a large sign “where the Jewish laws were noted and which the Jews posted on the walls of the streets”; it is very probable that the name comes from a clearly visible sign which warned Christians that the Jewish quarter began from there when, starting from the fifteenth century, at the time of the inquisitorial repression, the Israelites began to be isolated, to that religious intolerance which, in Modica, resulted in the massacre of 1474.

On 15 August of that year, in fact, the people of Modica went wild with the cry of “Viva Maria e Morte ai Giudei”, a horde of armed people invaded the Cartellone district and in the midst of a confusion of shouts, threats, prayers, of curses, a horrible scene of carnage and slaughter occurred. The number of Jews killed in a single day in Modica was 360.

The Cartellone district extended from San Francesco alla Cava, up to the Olivella, in length and from the plateau to the bed of the stream in width, this last band was called Costa de li judei and the terminal part that bordered the bank of the stream was called lu Cursu toponym that has survived until today.

The vast district, with cliffs, can be visited either on foot, favoring an itinerary that starts from the bottom, or, alternatively, by car: you will have the opportunity to enjoy a splendid panorama, the most evocative, the one that will show the topographical complexity of the city, its thousand faces, the many visual poles.

The walk through the ancient district of Cartellone starts right from the Corso, in front of the Church of San Pietro where, an alley dominated by an arch (note the keystone with a Hebrew inscription) invites passers-by to divert from the traditional route to venture into the maze of alleys. Leaving behind the first level of the district, the one called Costa de li judei, along the Corso and characterized by the presence of numerous eighteenth and nineteenth century buildings, the wealthy face of this side of the hill, one comes across, in the popular face of the city, in that minor but no less significant architecture from the historical and sociological point of view, made up both of the homes of the cadet branches of large and wealthy families, and of the humble homes of the popular class, of small artisans, by the presence, still today , of ancient shops where you can buy products and artifacts related to the local tradition and handcrafted. In Via Ritiro, just behind the Garibaldi Theater, is the Church of Santa Maria del Rosario called Il Ritiro with the adjoining “prison” of the Virgins. The church was founded around 1640 by the canon Don Pietro Civello. The pious and illustrious Modica added a “recluse” to the church under the title of the SS. Rosary for the virgins, which underwent renovations in 1820. Among the architectures to which reference can be made along the route we mention, moving to the left, the Portale De Leva, a fragment of late Gothic architecture, dating back to the second half of the fourteenth century, in Chiaramonte style. The Chiaramonte style flourished between 1296 and 1392, in the period in which the Chiaramontes (one of the most important families on the island) were awarded the title of Counts of Modica. The De Leva portal was the entrance to the Church of San Filippo and San Giacomo.

Behind the Portal, with the facade facing towards… you will be able to visit the Church of SS. Savior. Among the minor churches it is one of the most significant. There is no information relating to the church prior to the earthquake of 1693. The current appearance is to be referred to the eighteenth century, with further transformations between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The interior has spaces which, in their articulation, are among the most interesting of the Iblean eighteenth century. In the back wall of the apse there is a monumental chapel with two orders, in limestone decorated with pure gold. A fair number of rupestrian and semi-rupestrian churches were present in the Cartellone district and which could have been planted after 1492, the year of the expulsion of the Jews from Sicily wanted by Ferdinand the Catholic, however their pre-existence to this date is not excluded , since the Cartellone, being one of the largest districts, included areas inhabited by the Christian population. Among the churches we mention Santa Maria della Consolazione under the title of Xaudo, where in Xaudo we must recognize a vulgar distortion of Exaudi nos. Santa Maria della Consolazione is positioned between the end of Via Turbazzo and the Church of Santa Maria dell’Itria. The Church of San Rocco, prior to 1553, has a semi-rupestrian character, the original structure of which is unknown. On the path that climbs the northern part of the Idria hill, there is the rock church of San Giuseppe ù Timpuni, sufficiently known and explained as an expression of popular devotion of the XVII-XVIII century. From the rock plasters it is to be believed that the whole cave was frescoed. On the top of the hill named Itria, right in front of the Castle, in a strategic position from which it is possible to admire the city of Modica and perfectly read the structure of the Castello dei Conti, is the small Church of Santa Maria dell’Itria or Odigitria . Sources attest that the church has existed since 1600. Tradition has it that on the Tuesday after Easter, known as Easter or Itria Tuesday, the population gathers around the hill, on the rocky terraces, bringing food (roast meat, eggs, cheese, wine) to consume them near the church. Inside the church you can buy the Piretti, large lemons with a very thick and sweet skin that can be tasted covered in sugar or salt and pepper, a real delicacy. A charity “fishing” also takes place inside the church. The Itria Tuesday festival takes us back to the end of the fourteenth century when, with the Sicilian Vespers (1282), the Aragonese drove the Angevins away from the island. The name Odigitria means Madonna who guides the faithful along the right path (from odòs, in Greek “way” and from ago, “path”). The cult of the Madonna under this title seems to come from Constantinople, it is widespread in Sicily and has been assumed as a religious symbol of the island in the homonymous Sicilian church in Rome. The cult of the Modicans to the Madonna dell’Itria is particularly felt since the time of the building of the church. From the Church with the adjoining convent of Sant’Anna and San Calogero we reach the panoramic terrace from which we will be enchanted by the astonishing spectacle of the city, a spectacle also recommended at night due to the skilful lighting which allows us to read all the architecture, religious and civil , which blossom and manifest themselves as flowers in a nocturnal garden. The Church and Convent of Sant’Anna and San Calogero are witnessed for the first time by a document from the 1600s.

The Church is located on Via Liceo Convitto. Of the adjacent convent we know that it was built in 1613 and inhabited by the Reformed of the Third Order of St. Francis and, later, by the Observant friars, another Franciscan order. The premises of the convent were transformed in 1878 into a Liceo Convitto and already in 1880 the Liceo Classico named after the Modica philosopher Tommaso Campailla was in operation. Inside the convent of real interest and charm is the cloister with 18 monolithic columns and 8 seventeenth-century half-columns. The original cloister had two orders, the second was walled up in the nineteenth-century renovation of the building. The Church of Sant’Anna retains its seventeenth-century appearance since it was not significantly damaged by the earthquake. Right in front of the Church of Sant’Anna stands the imposing complex of the Benedictine nuns built at the end of the 19th century when the nuns were forced to clear out their convent with the annexed church which was located along Corso Umberto and which later became the seat of the Court of Modica. For those wishing to take advantage of the opportunity to visit another Franciscan complex, not too far from the Church of Sant’Anna, on the road that leads to Modica Bassa, in the median part of the hill called Dente, there is the Convent of the Capuchin fathers who settled in Modica since 1556. The layout of the complex, as it appears today, responds to the sixteenth-century formulation in the simplicity of the wall structures, in the distribution of the cells and workshops around the courtyard, in the presence of the loggia which flanks the room of the church and it also responds to the typology of many Capuchin monasteries present in Sicily: in the area it is similar to those of Scicli, Ragusa, Ispica and Sortino. The portal of the annexed church is defined by two pilasters and a Tuscan order frame and is surmounted by a window decorated with a shield under an omega tympanum. The interior has a single hall. On the central altar stands a beautiful wooden case dating from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, with a pyramidal development and concluded by a bulbous cusp.

Good walk!