Val di Noto (English: Province of Noto) is a geographical area of south east Sicily; it is dominated by the limestone Iblean plateau.

The Val di Noto owes its fame to the reconstruction which underwent after the year 1693, when the entire area was decimated by an enormous earthquake. Following the earthquake, many towns were rebuilt on entirely new sites, such as Noto and Grammichele. The rulers of the time, the kings of Spain, accounted the nobleman Giuseppe Lanza with special powers, which allowed him to redesign the damaged towns based on rational and scenographic town plans.

In fact, since the beginning of the Renaissance, architects had the dream to build an entirely new ideal city, where town planning follows rational design and streets and buildings are organized by functionality and beauty. However, only a very small part of their projects were really used, and most of them were limited to the reorganization of a street, like the Strada Nuova in Florence or the redesign of small villages, like the town of Pienza.

Noto (Sicilian: Notu, Latin: Neetum and Netum) is a city and comune in the Province of Syracuse, Sicily (Italy). Its located 32 km southwest of the city of Syracuse at the foot of the Iblean Mountains and gives its name to the surrounding area,Val di Noto. In 2002 Noto and its church were declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The older town, Noto Antica, lies 8 km directly north on Mount Alveria. It was ancient Netum, a city of Sicel origin, left to Hiero II by the Romans by the treaty of 263 BCE and mentioned by Cicero as a foederala citilas (Verr. v. 51, 133), and by Pliny as Latinae conditionis (Hist. Nat. iii. 8. 14). According to legend, Daedalus stopped here after his flight over the Ionian Sea, as well as Hercules, after his seventh task.

In the Roman era, it opposed praetor Verres. In 866 it was conquered by the Arabs, who elevated to a capital city of one of three districts of the island (the Val di Noto). Later it was a rich Norman city.

In the 16th and 17th centuries, the city brought forth several notable intellectual figures, including Giovanni Aurispa, jurists Andrea Barbazio and Antonio Corsetto, as well as the architect Matteo Carnelivari and the minor composer Mario Capuana. In 1503 king Ferdinand III gave it the title of civitas ingeniosa ("ingenious city"). In the following centuries, the city expanded enlarging its medieval limits; and new buildings, churches and convents were built. These, however, were all totally destroyed by the 1693 earthquake. The devastation of the city on Mount Alveria was accompanied by its economy^{[clarification needed]}, which relied mainly on agricultural products– vine, oil, cereals, rice, cotton– and its renowned handicrafts.