Modica and the Femminello Night Bandits

Modica at dusk, its old town stacked up the hillside. I awake in Modica knowing that I need to wash my clothes in the sink and get them out into the morning sun to dry. I plod up from the basement to find Iva in the living room, holding a bottle of nail polish up to the window and frowning at it. I open the doors to the balcony and the city beyond. Sicily has some of the world’s most beautiful villages, Cefalù and Erice among them, but Modica is not a village. Modica is an entire city, built on the steep sides of a ravine. It is houses stacked on houses, staircases everywhere leading under arches and between balconies. Modica has an entirely different relationship with gravity. Read the full article →