Ispica

Ispica sits on the southern edge of the Iblei plateau in south-east Sicily, 40 kilometres from Ragusa and 15 kilometres from the southern coast. The current Baroque town was rebuilt after the 1693 Val di Noto earthquake on a site slightly north of the medieval village destroyed in the shock; the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore (rebuilt 1750) and the Basilica della Santissima Annunziata both date to that reconstruction, and Ispica is one of the candidates that was considered for inclusion in the Val di Noto UNESCO listing in 2002 (it ultimately wasn't chosen but the architecture is the same Vaccarini-era late-Baroque). The town's real distinction is geological: the Cava d'Ispica, a 13-kilometre canyon cut into the limestone by the Pernamazzoni stream, with over 3,000 rock-cut tombs, prehistoric dwellings, early Christian catacombs, Byzantine oratories and medieval cave settlements in its walls — one of the largest cave-necropolis sites in the Mediterranean, occupied continuously from the Copper Age to the medieval period. The Parco Archeologico della Forza at the northern end of the canyon preserves the late-Roman / Byzantine castle and the early Christian catacombs of Larderia.