3. Church of Carmine

The church and convent are attributed by local sources to the 14th century (Fig. a). After the unification of Italy, the convent was confiscated by the State, which, after internal and external transformation works, used it as a Carabinieri barracks.
The façade features a portal with a rose window above it of clear 14th-century workmanship (Fig. b) while, after the earthquake, the upper part was rebuilt in late Baroque style.
Before the 1693 earthquake, the single-nave /Fig. c) church had two side chapels, of which only the one on the right remains. Inside is a group of statues of the Annunciation (Fig. d), from the Gagini school and a painted wooden altarpiece attributed to Cesare da Sesto, a pupil of Leonardo da Vinci, depicting a Carmelite saint.
During the latest restoration work, completely unknown structures have emerged in the convent: a cloister (Fig. e) datable to the early 14th century, thus attesting to the arrival of the Carmelites in Modica at the end of the 13th century, and other rooms whose memory had been lost, having been filled with debris and hidden. Medieval and post-medieval architectural elements of considerable historical interest have appeared in many of them (Fig. f).
On the first floor, on the left side of the cloister, four windows that were part of the medieval church, occluded after the 1693 earthquake, re-emerged.