The patroness of Buscemi is the Madonna del Bosco, celebrated on the last Sunday of August: in 2019, for the centenary of her patronage, the statue was restored and returned to its former splendour. The mother church, dedicated to the Nativity of Mary Most Holy, is considered among the most beautiful and harmonious in the Iblei territory: its three-tiered façade, clearly Baroque, has been attributed to Francesco Maria Sortino, who completed it in 1769, as shown by the keystone of the great bell tower.
The town's history begins in the Bronze Age, of which the archaeologist Paolo Orsi identified several settlements; in the surrounding territory, on Monte Casale at 830 metres above sea level, lies ancient Casmenae, a Syracusan colony founded according to Thucydides in 644 BC and used as a military outpost on the inland route from Syracuse to Selinunte. From an earlier period survive the rock-cut church of San Pietro and another rock-cut church used in the last century as an olive press. Among the families who held possession of Buscemi are the Ventimiglia and the Requesens, or Requisenz, of whom the castle ruins remain at the entrance to the town: the central gateway features a lowered arch flanked by two bas-reliefs depicting a man's and a woman's head, probably the Requisenz princes themselves, who sponsored its reconstruction.
