Ucria
Ucria is a "comune" (municipality) in the Metropolitan City of Messina in the Italian region Sicily, located about east of Palermo and about west of Messina. It is part of the Parco dei Nebrodi. Physical geography. Ucria is a small mountain town, between above sea level, in the Nebrodi Mountains. It is the meeting point of three major thoroughfares: the State Road #116 (Capo d'Orlando - Randazzo), the Provincial Road #136 (San Piero Patti - Ucria), and the Provincial Road #139. The last of these passes through Sinagra on the way to the sea at Brolo. The Via Padre Bernardino (Strada  Statale #116) bisects the town and provides a view of the surrounding mountains and the valley. History. Prehistoric tools, close to the Rocca di San Marco, and a storage room of Roman coins in the locality Arelluso, have been found in the area. The origin of the town dates back to the Magna Graecia era, while the name is derived from the Arabic "kerya", which means "village". The two Saracen towers, one in the outskirts that was to serve as a lookout and one in the north of the town, show that the village already existed during the Islamic domination  in Sicily, and that it represented a strategic location on the way to the sea. Since the year 1000, Ucria was dominated by a castle that, after the Christian conquest of the island, passed from one power to another, including the Normans, Hohenstaufen, Angevin and Aragonese. In the Norman period, Ucria was a fiefdom of Abbo Barresi. Many residents of Ucria immigrated to Waltham, Massachusetts, USA in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Main sights. Museums. Living plant germplasm bank. The Germplasm Bank of Living Plants includes the adjacent Botanical Garden, dedicated to the botanist Bernardino da Ucria (1739  -1796). It houses a collection of plant species of therapeutic interest and a variety of seeds of traditional cultivars of endangered fruits. It also houses a biological laboratory working at the protection and multiplication of germplasm for the conservation of biodiversity.