Martin Nixon is Assistant Professor of Art History at Zayed University, United Arab Emirates. His research interests include Southern Italian art and architecture, architecture and political power, urbanism and territorial transformation, the reception of architectural ornament, and questions of cultural and stylistic hybridity in architecture. Nixon completed his doctoral dissertation on the eighteenth-century rebuilding of the Val di Noto, Sicily with York University in 2018. In 2011, he received the John Fleming Travel Award to assist his doctoral research in Sicily. He completed an MA in Art History at the Open University in December 2007 with a dissertation on the eighteenth-century Sansevero Chapel in Naples.

• Acknowledgments, Introduction, Chapter One. Sicily as a Colonial Possession c. 1600-1750, Chapter Two. The Hexagonal Towns of Avola and Grammichele, Chapter Three. The Palaces of Noto, Chapter Four. The Palazzo Biscari, Catania, Chapter Five. The Palazzo Beneventano, Scicli, Chapter Six. The Palaces of Ragusa, Conclusion, Appendix, Glossary, List of Illustrations, Bibliography, Index