Novara di Sicilia

Toponymy

The earliest known name of the area was Noa, a Sicani word for fallow field. The name later evolved to Nouah and then Novara. The attribute ‘di Sicilia’ was added to distinguish it from the city of the same name in Piedmont.

History

There is archaeological evidence of Mesolithic habitation. Pliny mentions the Roman city of Noa, and its inhabitants the Noeni.

Lombards settled there in 1061–72. During the time of the Norman Kingdom of Sicily, in 1171 Hugh of Châteaneuf founded the Abbey of Santa Maria Nucaria. In the 1200s a castle was built by Roger of Lauria.

The lands passed to the Palizzis and then in 1364 to Vinciguerra d’Aragona. In 1641 the fief was granted to the wife of Marcantonio Colonna.

The village peaked in the 1600s with the development of a dense network of alleys and lanes, and the considerable array of decorative elements on the houses, carved in local sandstone, cipollino, and marble.