The artifacts discovered in the caves in the vicinity of Termini Imerese indicate that the area has been inhabited since prehistory. Of course, nowritten records exist from the prehistoric period. In fact, the oldestsettlement for which records exist dates back to 648 B.C., the year in which groups of Calcidesi and Siracusani founded Himera on the right of the river Homonym. The new colony became part of the historical record in 480 B.C., when it was the site of a crucial battle between the Carthaginians and the Agrigentini, aided by the Siracusani and Imeresi. The defeat of the Carthaginians allowed Agrigento to extend its dominion throughout the area, and Himera was repopulated with settler from Agrigento. These newcomers quickened the city's commercial activities and expanded its force of artisans, ushering in a period of prosperity that continued until 408 B.C. In that year, Carthaginian invaders took possession of Himera and destroyed it, forcing its inhabitants to flee for their lives. The next year, however, the same Carthaginians built on the summit of a promontory that overlooks the magnificent gulf a new city, Thermai, to which they welcomed the expelled Imeresi. The Romans, who took possession of Sicily following the First Punic War, increased the strategic value of the place, fortifying it. They significantly augmented the importance of the city so that, in the first century B.C., it was elevated to the level of Roman colony. In fact, the emperor Caesar Augustus himself bestowed the epithet "Splendissima" upon the city's name Thermae Himerenses. Around the fortified rock, there now spread a city, grand and prosperous, protected by towers and walls and embellished with villas and elegant public edifices: a forum, a Curia, a basilica, an amphitheater, a palatial bath, brimming with the thermal waters Hercules himself had drunk to give himself strength, and an imposing aqueduct that carried water to the city from a spring over seven kilometers away. Though the city's importance waned in the ensuing centuries, it was restored again during the period of Arabic domination. The energy, expertise, and culture of these people enabled them to enrich everything the area offered. According to the testimony of many travelers from this epoch, the Arabs made a conscious effort to reincarnate the ancient city Fastis at Termini Imerese. At the Norman takeover in the thirteenth century, Thermae became a city-state, an advantageous status that it maintained throughout the subsequent centuries. It remained an important commercial center, thanks in particular to its well-appointed port, the so-called "Caricatojo," which in the sixteenth century became the most important in the region. The heart of the city remained and continued to be the ancient Roman nucleus, accented by an Arabic overlay. Outside the city's heart, to the ancient fortress and outside the walls, one encountered a desolate expanse, until about 1860. The piazza in front of the fortress, which was known as the <<Largo Castello,>> came to be called Piazza Duome because of the presence of the Mother Church, built in the fifteenth century, built in the XV century on the ruins of other churches, each one grander and more modern than its predecessor. Dedicated to St. Nicola of Bari, the church possesses a grand crucifix painted in 1484 by master Pietro Ruzzolone, among the more renowned painters of the fifteenth century. The vestiges of the Roman era are of particular interest, especially the ruins of the Amphitheater and of the Cornelio Aqueduct. This last is interesting not only for its length but also for its innovative use of a type of sipon known as Barratina, whose bold, technical conception distinguished it from other siphons. The city's thermal waters (clorurosalsoiodiche at 43 degrees) also warrant mention. The Romans, with their famous passion for baths, were the first to construct an ediface over the ravine. Another was built in the seventeenth century, which was annexed in the nineteenth century to the Grand Hotel delle Terme, a neoclassical design of Damiani Almejda. During the 1800s, the priest Giuseppe Ciprì founded the town library. Today it possesses 93,000 volumes, 13 incunaboli (antecedent manuscripts a year 1499), 150 manuscripts, 19 parchments, 700 books from the fifteenth century, 10 books from the twelfth century, and a rich collection of autographs of historical and literary interest.

(traduzione di Bernardo Pace)