The patroness of Pachino is the Virgin Mary Assumed into Heaven, celebrated on 15 August. The mother church of the Holy Crucifix, with a single nave and a chapel to the right of the apse, was built in 1790 by Marquis Vincenzo Starrabba for the Christian community of the new town, and still holds the remains of him and his brother Gaetano; the building was restored in 2010.
The history of present-day Pachino begins in the 18th century, when the brothers Gaetano and Vincenzo Starrabba, owners of the fiefs of Scibini and Bimmisca, asked Charles III of Bourbon in 1758 for a grant to found a new settlement. In the coastal hamlet of Marzamemi, whose Arabic name means "harbour of the turtledoves", stands the old tuna fishery, which remained active until the 1950s, while not far away the watchtower of Xibini, erected in 1493 by Baron Antonino Xurtino, once defended the territory from Turkish pirate raids.
