Modica

We arrive late afternoon. It is winter and the warm light of golden hour has softly blanketed the opposite hillside, right before our eyes.

Modica is a complex web of steep hillsides and even steeper steps that we’ll become all too familiar with during our stay, leaving us grateful for not being here at the height of the sweltering sun.

The rewards for traversing this dramatic landscape are easy to find. Two impressive baroque churches dominate the centre of town, as does the Castello dei Conti on the south-eastern ridge.

Forni and pasticcerie selling delights like scacce and the local biscotti, ‘mpanatigghi, are as commonplace as vape shops in the UK.

And then there’s the chocolate…totally unlike anything I’d tried before, given the traditional non-refined methods of production at stalwarts like Bonajuto. An unfussy purity that for the first time in my life connected me with the cacao itself.

Food is always the anchor, challenging what I think I know.

Nowhere more so than a trip to Daniele Baglieri’s pizzeria, carved into the rocky hillside, where they really smash the typical pizzeria mould, using different wheats, styles and cooking techniques. I have the Padellino - topped with the greatest cherry tomato I’ve ever eaten.

Before we leave we take one last view from our terrace, across the town below. It looks so still from here, yet we know that it is anything but.