The commune of Canicattini Bagni is situated in Sicily, in the territory of the province of Siracusa; it has more than 7.000 inhabitants and the communes nearly are Noto and Siracusa.
Children and sprays in bloom, faces of woman and cornucopias of fruit: there are so many decorative details that embellish the houses at Canicattini, as if, in the solidity of the buildings of the middle class and farmers, suddenly a love for the beautiful, the unnecessary and the superfluous had snuck in that gives joy to the eyes and to life. It was a particularly happy economic situation, at the beginning of the twentieth century and down to the period after World War Two, that stimulated the people of Canicattini to ask local chiselers to also devote themselves to the decoration of houses, and even if the results do not rise above good facture, Canicattini art nouveau too has a dignity of its own, its own personal expressiveness: a walk in the central area, particularly along Via Magenta, Via Umberto and Corso Vittorio Emanuele III, allows you to get an idea of it. Like other communes in the area, the village was rebuilt after the 1693 earthquake, on the model of a 'peasant town'.
However, the area had been inhabited for a long time before that: in the Olivella area, a few kilometres from the village, a Byzantine necropolis with about seventy graves bears witness to a settlement going back to around 1500 years ago. Over the centuries, Canicattini was always connected to the nearby Sant'Alfano feud, and precisely to get from the boundless countryside of the latifundium to the rural village the bridge of the same name was built (1796), a slender stone arcade to guard which there are Currarinu and Calamaru, two characters bearing in their hands a bottle and a loaf. According to a local legend, these were two rural guards that, at the peak of a long series of quarrels, killed each other right on the bridge. In the same year the main church was built (also in Via XX Settembre), dedicated to St. Mary of the Angels, with a nave and two side aisles, inside which there is preserved the Ecce Homo, the revered simulacrum that is carried in a procession on Good Friday in a fascinating event.
Lastly, we must mention the presence of a prestigious municipal music school, named after Arturo Basile. Here young Canicattini people can undertake and perfect study of the piano, the violin, the guitar and many other instruments.
The commune of Canicattini Bagni is situated in Sicily, in the territory of the province of Siracusa; it has more than 7.000 inhabitants and the communes nearly are Noto and Siracusa.
