Given the distances to be traveled and the imperfect roads, conventional wisdom stipulates that even ambitious short-term visitors to Sicily stick to either side of the island. There’s no wrong choice, though it’s the eastern coast that’s home to the majestic Mount Etna, Europe’s highest active volcano. That was also the side favored by the Greeks, who colonized Sicily between the eighth and sixth centuries B.C. (before the Romans, the Byzantines, the Arabs, the Normans and the Bourbons all took their turn), making a bustling capital out of Syracuse. In more recent times, the hilltop town of Taormina has been the popular eastern-facing destination — it was even the site of the 2017 Group of 7 summit. As its cobblestone streets have become ever more crowded, though, the Val di Noto region — which is a two-hour drive south and includes the towns of Ragusa, Modica and Noto — and the nearby city of Syracuse are finding new life.

Following the 1693 Sicily earthquake, locals rebuilt this cluster of towns in the late Baroque style of the day, with central piazzas anchored by stone churches with carved griffins and tiers of Corinthian columns. Thanks to funding from the European Commission, many of the towns’ buildings were restored in the early 2000s, which spurred entrepreneurs to open small, jewel-like hotels and restaurants. Noto, especially, contains many pre-eminent examples of Sicilian Baroque — it was built anew six miles from the original city, the still half-standing Noto Antica — as well as other attractions, from antique shops to a nature reserve filled with grazing flamingos.

[Sign up here for the T List newsletter, a weekly roundup of what T Magazine editors are noticing and coveting now.]

And yet, Val di Noto still feels fully alive. The steps of Noto Cathedral are routinely used as seating for junior-school performances, while women sell fresh blood oranges at the daily market on Syracuse’s island offshoot of Ortygia. This exquisite port town is a good place to begin a tour of the region, having been continuously inhabited for 3,000 years, with beauty left over from multiple points of the area’s varied history. Next door to the white-stone Duomo is another church that houses a late masterpiece by Caravaggio, who arrived in Sicily in 1608 after escaping from prison in nearby Malta.