Rometta brings remarkable signs of history and prehistory. We know nothing sure about the primitive human settings in this area, but for the testimonies of life found here – which go back to the first age of Neolithic, (probably the so called “Culture of Stentinello” – 4000 years B.C.), to the Iron Age (on the tops of the hill called Motta), till the Necropolis of V-III sec. B.C – we can think that also in the place today known as Rometta there was originally an ancient human settlement, perhaps with military functions.

Around the V century A.D., Rometta was populated from Latin-Greek people, who moved from the coast to this strategic place, proper for the extreme defence, looking for a shelter from the terrible invasions of the Barbarians. Soon Rometta assumed a militarily role as invulnerable fortress. From its high towers one could keep a check on most of the ancient road that from Messina conducted to Palermo.

The latter had ordered the arrest of the opponent Bishop. So, after having wandered in some centres of the Nebrodi, Leone took refuge on the hills surrounding Rometta, where he lived in a cavern as an eremite until 789. In that year he came back to Catania, where he died after short time.

Rometta was the last Byzantine defence against the Arabic invasion of Sicily. For years, it represented a Christian bastion and a safe shelter for those people that – under the Moslem advance – tried to escape, crossing the strait of Messina, towards Calabria.

From 963 to 965 A.D., Rometta sustained a very hard siege. His inhabitants distinguished themselves for extreme actions of heroism. For two days, 24-25 October 964, a bloody battle took place in the area between the beach and the besieged citadel (probably in the part of Rometta today known as Mazzabruno). The heroic deeds of the battle are perpetuated in the pages of the Arabic and Greek historians’ Annales, that give us a detailed report of the fight. The Byzantine army, strong of 30.000 soldiers, arrived in Sicily from Constantinople to break the Arabic siege to Rometta and to regain Sicily to the Empire.

The Byzantines fought against Arabs with impetus and with charges of cavalry. But the Arabic leader ibn Ammar incited his soldiers to fight till death, and the Saracens, even if inferior in number, succeeded to stop the attack of the Christian enemies and forced them to escape. At the end of the battle, about 10000 soldiers of Byzantium lied dead on the ground, while the rest was imprisoned. It is narrated that on the battle field was found a sword belonged to the prophet Mohammed, a loot of a previous conflict.

The siege of Rometta continued until the following May, when the people of Rometta, without the hope of other military helps from Byzantium, weakened by hunger and by the continuous attacks brought by the Saracen army, let women, children and old men surviving go out of the besieged fortress. At dawn of May 5, 965, the Arabs, who had before repeatedly proposed the surrender to the soldiers of Rometta, receiving always a refusal, launched the decisive attack to the Castle of Rometta with all of their strengths. The last heroic defenders fell fighting, one after the other. Rometta was sacked and set on fire