Located near the southeastern corner of Sicily on the Ionian coast, Siracusa (Syracuse) is built on an ancient Greek settlement founded by Corinthians in 734 BC. More than any other modern city in Sicily, Syracuse manifests a visible continuity from its ancient Greek past, both historical and mythological. Its older quarter is an island, Ortegia (or Ortygia, from the Greek for "quail," probably named for that bird's abundance in this area). Ortegia is known for, among many other things, the freshwater Spring of Arethusa. When Artemis changed Arethusa into a spring of water to escape the river god Alpheus, it was here that the transformed maiden emerged. On a more factual note, Syracuse was the city of Archimedes, Pindar and Aeschylus. It was the most important city in Magna Graecia, and for a time rivaled Athens as the most important city of the Greek world...
		Considered Sicily's "Baroque City," Noto is in the province of Syracuse, in the southeastern corner of Sicily. The town is located about 35 kilometers southwest of the city of Syracuse. Old Noto was completely destroyed in the extremely violent earthquake that struck Eastern Sicily in 1693, a quake that heavily damaged Catania and Syracuse also. The present site of Noto was rebuilt from scratch, and almost entirely in the Baroque style, the prevailing style of building in Sicily at the time.
The city of Ragusa, capital of the province of the same name, is located about an hour's drive from Syracuse, the nearest large city. Ragusa's population falls a shade short of 70,000. For most visitors, Ragusa and its province are off the beaten path. However, this factor also has an advantage since the area is one of the more tranquil and thus more "authentically" Sicilian of the island's nine provinces, and while the province of Enna can make the same claim, landlocked Enna doesn't have any beaches while Ragusa has. Consequently, the lack of tourists here makes the beaches of the province of Ragusa some of the cleanest and affordable and least crowded to be found in Sicily. Though we would not place Ragusa and its surrounding area on the must-see list of Sicilian attractions, if you are traveling from Syracuse to Agrigento or vice-versa, Ragusa and its Baroque churches are worth seeing.