Ragusa Ibla is a joy to wander, its labyrinthine lanes weaving through rock-grey palazzi to open onto beautiful, sun-drenched piazzas. It's easy to get lost but you can never go too far wrong, and sooner or later you'll end up at Piazza Duomo , Ragusa's sublime central square.
East of the piazza, Corso XXV Aprile leads down to a second eye-catching Gagliardi church, Chiesa di San Giuseppe , with an elliptical interior topped by a cupola decorated with a fresco of the Gloria di San Benedetto (Glory of St Benedict, 1793) by Sebastiano Lo Monaco. Further downhill, to the right of the entrance of the Giardino Ibleo, you can see the Catalan Gothic portal of what was once the large Chiesa di San Giorgio Vecchio , but is now mostly ruined. In the lunette there is an interesting bas-relief of St George killing the dragon.
At the other end of Ragusa Ibla, the Chiesa del Purgatorio is one of the few churches in town to have survived the great 1693 earthquake.
