Castronovo di Sicilia ( Sicilian: ''Castrunovu'') is a ''

comune A (; : , ) is an administrative division of Italy, roughly equivalent to a township or municipality. It is the third-level administrative division of Italy, after regions () and provinces (). The can also have the City status in Italy, titl ...

'' (municipality) in the

Metropolitan City of Palermo The Metropolitan City of Palermo (; ) is a metropolitan city in Sicily, Italy. Its capital is the city of Palermo. It replaced the province of Palermo and comprises the city of Palermo and 82 other ''comuni'' (: ''comune''). It has 1,194,439 in ...

in the

Italian Italian(s) may refer to: * Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries ** Italians, a Romance ethnic group related to or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom ** Italian language, a Romance languag ...

Autonomous Region An autonomous administrative division (also referred to as an autonomous area, zone, entity, unit, region, subdivision, province, or territory) is a subnational administrative division or territory, internal territory of a sovereign state that has ...

Sicily Sicily (Italian language, Italian and ), officially the Sicilian Region (), is an island in the central Mediterranean Sea, south of the Italian Peninsula in continental Europe and is one of the 20 regions of Italy, regions of Italy. With 4. ...

, located about southeast of

Palermo Palermo ( ; ; , locally also or ) is a city in southern Italy, the capital (political), capital of both the autonomous area, autonomous region of Sicily and the Metropolitan City of Palermo, the city's surrounding metropolitan province. The ...

Etymology

Castronovo di Sicilia, alternatively spelled as "Castronuovo" possibly derives its name from

medieval Latin Medieval Latin was the form of Literary Latin used in Roman Catholic Church, Roman Catholic Western Europe during the Middle Ages. It was also the administrative language in the former Western Roman Empire, Roman Provinces of Mauretania, Numidi ...

''castrum'', meaning "fortress", and ''nuovo'' meaning "new". ''Càstro'' also translates to "castle" in Corsican, an Italian dialect similar to Sicilian.

History

The land surrounding Castronovo di Sicilia has been occupied since antiquity, with excavations having uncovered pottery dating back to the fifth century BCE. The area is rumored to be the site of the ancient

Sicani The Sicani or Sicanians were one of three ancient peoples of Sicily present at the time of Phoenician and Greek colonization. The Sicani dwelt east of the Elymians and west of the Sicels, having, according to Diodorus Siculus, the boundary with ...

city of Crastus. Historians believe that the Falaride tribe of Agrigento had a fortress built that marked the limit between the Carthaginian, Agrigento and Syracuse (Greek) territories. The settlement was demolished by Roman occupiers in retaliation for slave revolts during the

servile wars The Servile Wars were a series of three slave revolts ("servile" is derived from ''servus'', Latin for "slave") in the late Roman Republic: * First Servile War (135−132 BC) — in Sicily, led by Eunus, a former slave claiming to be a prophet, ...

around 105 BCE. The surviving population of Crastus dispersed over the entire territory of present-day Castronovo. Castronovo likely gets its name from the nearby Castello di Castronovo di Sicilia, a fortress complex fortified by Byzantine occupiers during the

Muslim conquest of Sicily The Arab Muslim conquest of Sicily began in June 827 and lasted until 902, when the last major Byzantine stronghold on the island, Taormina, fell. Isolated fortresses remained in Byzantine hands until 965, but the island was henceforth under Ar ...

. In 1154, the site was recorded by Arab cartographer

Muhammad al-Idrisi Abu Abdullah Muhammad al-Idrisi al-Qurtubi al-Hasani as-Sabti, or simply al-Idrisi (; ; 1100–1165), was an Arab Muslim geographer and cartographer who served in the court of King Roger II at Palermo, Sicily. Muhammad al-Idrisi was born in C ...

as ''Qasr nubu''. Government records describe the settlement known as "Il Cassero" or "Kassar" as a "partially Hellenized indigenous settlement then occupied in the Middle Ages." The fortification lies directly above a castle occupied by Roman, Byzantine, Arab, and Norman elites over the centuries, now known as Colle San Vitale. Historians have attributed, with "acceptable certainty", a nearby bridge to the Roman period. Liturgical recordsEpistola fratres Conradi…Panormitana ad episcopum Cathanensem, sive Brevis Chronica 1027-1083, Rerum Italicarum Scriptores, Tome I, Part 2, p. 278. indicate that

Jordan Jordan, officially the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, is a country in the Southern Levant region of West Asia. Jordan is bordered by Syria to the north, Iraq to the east, Saudi Arabia to the south, and Israel and the occupied Palestinian ter ...

, son of Norman conqueror Roger I, captured the fort (recorded as "Castrum Novum") on his way to capture Muslim Syracuse.

References

External links

Official website
Municipalities of the Metropolitan City of Palermo {{Sicily-geo-stub