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 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 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. In 1154, the site was recorded by Arab cartographer
Muhammad al-Idrisi 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. indicate that
Jordan, son of Norman conqueror
Roger I, captured the fort (recorded as "Castrum Novum") on his way to capture Muslim
Syracuse. ==References==