Sicily - Virtu Ferries

Modica
Modica is a city and comune in the Province of Ragusa, Sicily. The city is situated in the Iblean
Mountains and, along with Val di Noto, is part of UNESCO Heritage Sites in Italy.
According to Thucydides, the city was founded in 1360 BC or 1031 BC and was inhabited by the
Sicels in the 7th century BC. It was probably a dependency of Syracuse. Modica was occupied
by the Romans after the battle of the Egadi islands against the Carthaginians in the Punic Wars
241 BC, together with Syracuse and all of Sicily. Modica became one of the thirty-five decuman
(spontaneously submitted) cities of the island and was oppressed by the praetor Verres. It became
an independent municipium, and apparently a place of some consequence. The city is also
mentioned among the inland towns of the island both by Pliny and Ptolemy; and though its name
is not found in the Itineraries, it is again mentioned by the Geographer of Ravenna. Silius Italicus
also includes it in his list of Sicilian cities, and immediately associates it with Netum (now Noto
Antico), with which it was clearly in the same neighborhood.
The southeast of Sicily and Modica (according to the German historian L. Hertling) was rapidly
Christianized, as the diocese of Syracuse boasts an apostolic foundation by St. Paul in 61 AD. In
535, the Byzantine general Belisarius expelled the Ostrogoths and established for Justinian I the
government of the East-Roman Empire (also improperly known as the Byzantine Empire) and the
already Greek-speaking population fixed their culture until the Latinization of the Normans in the
11th century. In 845, Modica was captured by the Arabs who referred to the city as Mudiqah. In
1091 the conquest of Modica and the entire Val di Noto ended the long lasting war of the Normans,
led by Roger of Hauteville, against the Arabs.
In 1296, Modica became the capital of an important county, which under the Chiaramonte family
became a flourishing semi-independent state controlling the whole southern third of the island,
with the right of a mint of its own and other privileges. The most striking event of the modern era
was the earthquake of 1693, which destroyed the entire Val di Noto, although to a slightly lesser
extent in Modica.
Annexed to Italy in 1860, Modica remained district capital until 1926, when it was included in the
province of Ragusa.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modica