PalermoCastronovo di Sicilia.
Its territory has been inhabited since remote times
as testified by prehistoric finds and by the ancient
city of Crasto, on the Kassar plain (late 6th or
early 5th c. BC). When the Romans destroyed it,
the inhabitants settled on the steep rock of San
Vitale; the site of the present town was not occupied
until Arab times. It later developed as a fief of
powerful overlords (the Chiaromontes, Moncadas and
Ventimiglias).
The Chiesa Madre, The Trinity, appears now as it
was after reconstruction in the 17th c. - only a
small portal in the left side remains of the original
15th c. structure. The church contains a statue
of the Madonna della Catena, of the Gagini school,
and another of St Peter (15th c.). Outside the town,
on Monte Cassaro, are the ruins of a boundary wall
that may have been that of the pre-Greek city of
Kassar.
