Ragusa (Raùsa in Sicilian) is an Italian town of 73 147
inhabitants, the capital of the free municipal consortium of Ragusa
in Sicily.
It is called the "city of bridges" due to the
presence of three very picturesque structures of historical value.
In 1693 a devastating earthquake caused the almost total destruction
of the entire city, claiming more than five thousand victims. The
reconstruction, which took place in the eighteenth century, divided
it into two large districts: on one side Ragusa upper, located on
the plateau, on the other Ragusa Ibla, built from the ruins of the
ancient city and rebuilt according to the ancient medieval layout.
The architectural masterpieces built after the earthquake,
together with all those present in the Val di Noto, were declared a
World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 2002. Ragusa is one of the most
important places for the presence of testimonies of Baroque art,
such as its churches and its eighteenth-century buildings.
The city, which extends over the southern part of
the Iblei mountains, is the southernmost provincial capital of
Italy, is the third Sicilian municipality by surface and eleventh by
altitude and is on average 20 km from the sea.
The highest
peak is Mount Arcibessi (906 m a.s.l.), which is why it is one of
the municipalities lapped by the sea with the highest difference in
altitude. The oldest district of the city, Ragusa Ibla, stands on a
hill. To the east the city is surrounded by the San Cono hill, and
in the middle flows the Irminio river, one of the most important in
south-eastern Sicily. To the north the city is bordered by the Cava
del torrente San Leonardo and Mount Patro. To the south is Mount
Bollarito which is divided from Ragusa by the Fiumicello stream.
Finally to the west rises Ragusa Superiore on the Patro and
Cucinello hills, the most recent part of the city instead on the
Corrado, Pendente and Selvaggio hills, the first two detached from
the surrounding hills by two deep gorges, the typical "cave" of the
Hyblean plateau, the Cava Gonfalone and the Cava Santa Domenica.
The city develops towards the west until it reaches the plateau
(680 m a.s.l.). In the past, the entire territory of Ragusa was
covered with dense Mediterranean vegetation consisting mainly of
oaks and laurels. The deforestation perpetrated over the centuries,
starting with the massive ones carried out by the Romans, in order
to allocate the land to the cultivation of cereals and pastoralism,
have largely contributed to the decrease in water resources, which
in any case are higher than in the entire province. those of other
Sicilian provinces. The river Irminio, once navigable, as evidenced
by ancient Arab documents, is barred by a dam; this gave rise to an
artificial lake: the Santa Rosalia lake, which is located halfway
between Ragusa and Giarratana. In the Hyblean territory the flora
includes over 1500 taxa, for the most part belonging to the
circum-Mediterranean element.
The extra-municipal territory,
almost entirely, insists on the last strips of the Iblei Mountains
that gently slide towards the Mediterranean sea, a plateau
characterized by enormous cultivated expanses, an interrupted
network of dry stone walls dotted with carob and olive trees. The
reliefs once degraded to sea level, give way to the coast on which
the municipal territory overlooks for about 15 km. The Ragusa coast
is made up of both large sandy stretches and stretches of
outcropping rock.
In the last two million years, after the
marine regression that in the Miocene had left the Iblei and the
whole seabed that goes up to the islands of the Maltese archipelago,
the opposite movement, in the Pliocene immersed the lower lands and
the orogenetic events caused by submarine volcanic activity made up
the Ragusan plateau. The territory is mainly hilly, formed by large
plateaus and valleys and the flow of the rivers has eroded the
plateau forming numerous deep canyons. The Hyblean plateau is one of
the promontories of the African plate and consists of a
continental-type crust mostly of carbonate and carbonatic-marly
sediments of the Cretaceous-Quaternary age in which basic volcanites
are interspersed, moreover karst is widespread. In the coastal
areas, near the sea, there is sandstone. Some areas of the Iblei
Mountains also have rocks of volcanic origin such as near Monte
Lauro, which is part of an underwater volcanic complex. From the
limestone that abounds in the entire territory, dry stone walls are
born, which delimit the locks and characterize the landscape.
As for the seismic risk, Ragusa is classified in zone 2
(medium-high seismicity) by the PCM ordinance n. 3274 of 20/03/2003.
Ragusa enjoys a hilly Mediterranean climate: its altitude in fact determines colder average temperatures than those of the Sicilian coast. Snow events are rare in the lower areas of the city such as Ibla; they occur more frequently, however, in the higher areas, located on the plateau, which have a mountain Mediterranean climate. Winter is very rainy: rainfall is abundant from October to the end of March. Together with Messina, Ragusa is one of the wettest provincial capitals, having an annual average of about 700 mm per year. On the other hand, the amount of rain that falls on the elevated areas of the Iblei mountains is greater, where it can exceed 1000 mm per year. The greatest rainfall occurs, as well as during intense thunderstorms typical of autumn, during the more persistent winter rising, which can easily bring quantities even around 200 mm in a day on all the Iblei, with the exception of the lowland vittoriese which is disadvantaged if eastern winds blow. There is a ten-year oscillation between 650 mm and 1 481 mm overall.