You say San Bartolomeo and you say Scicli, the Cava, one of the canyons that criss-cross the Iblei, which guards the origins of the town in south-eastern Sicily: the Chiafura caves are the cavern and the heart of Scicli, which have never ceased to pulsate and emanate charm inside and outside the town limits. There is the splendid eighteenth-century church of San Bartolomeo, a triumph of late Baroque Ibleo, among the most beautiful ecclesiastical buildings in Sicily, whose monumental but harmonious façade nestles between the two hills that enclose the Cava, setting it in a natural setting of such rare beauty that the famous architect Paolo Portoghesi described it as a pearl inside the shell.