A town founded in 716 BC by colonists from Zankle (Messina). It was taken by the Athenians in 426 BC and by the Syracusan tyrant Agathocles in 315 BC. The consul Gaius Duilius won the first Roman naval victory over the Carthaginians in the bay in 260 BC. It is located on the northeast coast of Sicily, facing the Aeolian Islands, and demonstrates close cultural connections with the prehistoric sequence on these islands. It was occupied throughout the Bronze Age; the Middle Bronze Age culture had a cemetery of pithos burials (with the dead placed in large jars in the crouched position) while in the succeeding Late Bronze Age phase (Ausonian culture) had a cemetery of urnfield type, characterized by cremations in urns and bronzes of local Urnfield (Proto-Villanovan) type. The old town on a hill above is partly surrounded by Spanish walls from the 16th century and contains a 13th-century Norman castle.