CataniaMilitello in Val di Catania.
According to tradition the town was founded by the Roman Consul Marcellus, during the siege of Syracuse in 214 BC, but more likely the original nucleus of the town was a Byzantine hamlet which expanded under the Arabs and in the feudal period, first belonging to the Barresi family and after 1567 to the Brancifortes, who took the title of Marquis. It was seriously damaged by the earthquake in 1693 and immediately rebuilt on the same site.

The principal buildings in this little town are baroque in inspiration, as for example the Palazzi Baldanza, Baldanza-Denaro, Maiorana (or dei Leoni, because of the lions at the corner), Rametta, Reburdone, and Reforgiato; as also the churches. In Piazza Municipio we can see San Benedetto, designed in 1623 by the Catania architect Valeriano de Franchis, with its high façade (1725); Latin-cross in plan, it has a marble high altar, a wooden choir with 40 episodes from the life of St Benedict, and a painting, St Benedict giving the Rule of the Order, by G. B. Baldanza, a local artist (1646). The Chiesa Madre, San Nicolò e SS. Salvatore, in Via Matrice, is a church of considerable size, with a lofty cupola (early 20th c.), 18th c. stuccos and paintings and a baroque wooden crucifix. Beside the Chiesa Madre is the Museo di San Nicolò. The Museum (20 rooms) contains numerous objets d'art and precious ornaments of the 17th and 18th c. The Oratorio di Santa Maria della Catena, in Piazza Vittorio Emanuele II, has some late 16th c. architectural features, a coffered ceiling and gilded baroque stuccos. There is a delightful Renaissance chapel in the Chiesa di Sant'Antonio di Padova, in Via Carrera. The Chiesa di Santa Maria della Valle, (c. 1722), has a massive campanile; the church has a nave and two aisles and a painting by Olivio Sozzi, The Nativity, over the high altar; another painting, The Birth of Jesus, is attributed to Andrea della Robbia. Two canvases by Filippo Paladino, St Charles Borromeo (1612) and Virgin and Saints, are in the Chiesa di San Francesco di Assisi or dei Cappuccini. Outside the town there is a late Gothic church, Santa Maria La Vetere, with a portico and columns supported by lions, a portai with Sibyls and prophets, and a sculpture, Madonna and Child, in the lunette.