For four centuries this corner of Sicily was the Contea di Modica , the largest and most powerful feudal state on the island — effectively a country within the kingdom, with its own administration, its own courts and a degree of autonomy no other Sicilian territory had. Modica was its capital, and Ragusa one of its towns.

That history explains the character of the whole area: a dense network of substantial, prosperous towns rather than a single dominant city, and a strong local identity that predates any modern province.

On 11 January 1693 the great earthquake of the Val di Noto destroyed everything. What the towns did next divided them. Ragusa split : part of the population rebuilt in place, on the old ridge — Ragusa Ibla — and part built a new town on the plateau above, Ragusa Superiore . For a period the two were separate comuni , reunited later. Modica, Scicli, Comiso and the rest rebuilt in the same unified late baroque that makes the Val di Noto a UNESCO site.

In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the area prospered by Sicilian standards — agriculture on the plateau, asphalt quarrying, and later oil at Ragusa, the first commercial oilfield in Italy.

On 2 January 1927 twelve comuni of the old county were detached from Siracusa to form the province of Ragusa, promoted by the Fascist deputy Filippo Pennavaria .