About
the origins of Gangi, still today mythology and truth are mixed.
People from Crete come in Sicily following up Minosse in order to search
Dedalo; after they lost their ships and their captain, they decided
to stay there and found Minoa. Other people were pushed towards the
inside of the isle where, they founded the city of Engio, with a temple
dedicated to the Goddesses Mothers, in the 1200 B.C.  As
years go by, the force of the city grew and the temple became rich of
treasures (the spear and the helmet of Merione, Minosse's grandson,
Ulysses crews, and more the Scipio the African's armours and shields),
but a political group arrested its expansion. During the Punic wars
it was for Carthagin, which cost it a series of threats from Marcello.
During Verre's domination, the temple was deprived of a part of its
treasures, and Cicerone remembered this episode in his "Verrinae ".
In the year 850 about, the city fell under the Saracens' power, which
built numerous fortifications, the " Madonita " on the Mount Marone,
the fortress of " Regiovanni ", the " Cylindrical
Tower " at the foot of Gangi. In the 1067 city was liberated
by the Normans guided by Ruggero and assigned to the County of Geraci.
Then it passes to the Ventimiglia, gentlemen of Geraci, and, as the
historian Mogavero Fina and other authors write, in the 1271, it changed
its name in Gangi. It was embezzled together with the County of Geraci
by Carlo D' Angiņ and donated to its vicar in Sicily, Filippo from Monfort.
After the Vespro revolution, in the 1282, Gangi and the County returned
to Enrico Ventimiglia. In the 1296 the crown passed to Federico III
from Aragon. Gangi rebelled to its king and the count of Geraci. The
fatidic date seems to be the 1299, year in which the city was razed
by the troops guided by Federico III and Enrico Ventimiglia, count of
Geraci. The survivors, straggled, gathered around the existing Castle,
on the Mount Marone, in a very defensible position.
During the first years of XIV century, people constructed walls and
ditch, doors, towers of sight and defence. Francesco I succeeded to
his father Enrico Ventimiglia. We can attribute the construction of
the square tower to him, today famous as Tower
of the Ventimiglia.
The city had numerous entrance ways, some of which were shaggy and
particularly narrow, they lead to the country, east ward and the westward
(today they are Porta of Conte Street and Porta of Malta Street),
and an other access, which led to the only great door surmounted by
the tower. 
Along this last one, the first religious constructions stood, they
became the origins of dwellings and the expansion of the city. Between
the XIV and the XV the century, the religious orders increased in
Gangi. At the beginning of the XVI century, second the data found
from the Carlo V census, the population of Gangi was approximately
3200 inhabitants and there were more than 900 houses. The 1500 and
the 1600 are periods of great evolution for the social and cultural
plan. Gangi passes from the Ventimiglia's lordship to that one of
the Graffeo, which for will of Filippo IV king of Spain, they acquired
the title of principles of Gangi and marquises of Regiovanni. In the
1677 the title passed to the Valguarnera.
In 1700 numerous academies of men of letters rose in Gangi, among
which that one of the Industrious. Numerous noble palaces are constructed,
as Bongiorno Palace, Mocciaro
Palace, and Sgadari Palace.
The recent history is less rich than its past.
The recent history is less rich
than its past.At the beginning of the 1800, the inhabitants were 9500
about, more than now.The masterpieces are very little, we cite only
the Communal Palace.
The rest is modern history, the Unification of Italy, the slow decadence
of the aristocracy and its fees, the Americans' arrival, etc..
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