Nestled upon a limestone bastion, the city rises on the southern buttresses of the Hyblean mountain, amongst the canyons carved out by the San Leonardo and San Domenico streams, once populated by agricultural settlements and watermills, still present and operating to this day.
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The city is split into two distinct urban nuclei, separated by the \u201cValle dei Ponti\u201d – a steep precipice crossed by three bridges, including the 19th-century Ponte Cappuccini.<\/p>\n
Ragusa and Ragusa Ibla stand out thanks to their splendid Baroque buildings, bearing witness to the desires of the rich landed aristocracy and the nascent Hyblean bourgeoisie: the cathedral named after St. John the Baptist, an imposing 18th-century construction; the Church of Santa Maria delle Scale in the eastern-most part, its name deriving from the evocative staircase leading to the Church of Santa Maria dell’Itria; the Church of San Giorgio, a Baroque masterpiece whose neoclassical dome dominates the district of Ibla, not to mention the sumptuous Cosentini and Battaglia palaces and the Hyblean Archaeological Museum.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Nestled upon a limestone bastion, the city rises on the southern buttresses of the Hyblean mountain, amongst the canyons carved out by the San Leonardo and San Domenico streams, once populated by agricultural settlements and watermills, still present and operating to this day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":632,"parent":1063,"menu_order":2,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-1065","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n