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.