Rosalia Sinibaldo was born in Palermo about the year 1128. Tradition narrates that while William, Duke of Puglia and Calabria (1095-28 July, 1127) was admiring the sunset with his wife, Guadalgrima, a figure appeared to him saying: «William, I announce to you that for the will of God,in the house of Sinibaldo member of your court, a rose without thorns is to be born.» It seems for this reason that shortly after that episode when a baby girl was born in that family she was called Rosalia. Her father the count Sinibaldo of Quisquina of the Roses, landowner of several properties in Quisquina and in Bivona, territories that are included in the province of Agrigento, descented from Charlemagne.Her mother Maria Guiscardi was herself of noble origins and related to the Norman court.
Rosalia lived her early youth in comfort and luxury at the court of king Ruggero II. One day count Baldovino saved the king from a wild animal that was about to attack him.The king wanted to return the favour in fullfilling a desire. The count asked to marry Rosalia who presented herself the next day without her golden plaits that she had cut off, refusing the offer and preferring to follow her vocation to dedicate herself totally to God.

Initially the young girl took shelter in the convent of the Basilians in Palermo,Soon she was forced to escape as her parents and the count would not let her live her spiritual life in peace and tried to persuade her to change her mind. She decided to reach a cave in her father's property that she had once seen, near Bivona. Rosalia was about 13 years old.She lived in that small cave on the northern side of Mount Quisquina, in the mountain chain called the Sicani Mountains which separate the province of Palermo from that of Agrigento. It is at about 1000 metres above the level of the sea. The site is dark and humid, embedded between two hillocks Mount Cammarata at est and Mount Quisquina of the Roses at west,so well hidden by the woods that the Saracens had called it Quisquina, from the arab «Coschi» that means «dark». The gorge that she had chosen to retire in prayer and live in chastity was slightly more than an underground passage that could be reached only on knees. The cave is small and dark and formed some cells connected to each other by narrow corridors. In this remote place, protected by a dense vegetation and hidden in the hollow rock,no-one would have been able to notice her. So Rosalia could pass in absolute solitude the long years of voluntary exile, dedicating herself exclusively to praying.
In short time she became well-known among the local people and the cave had become a place of pilgrimage. Usually when someone decided to retire in hermitage the site chosen was always near a convent to enable to follow the religious rites and find restore in time of need. One day the cave was found vacant and it was later known that Rosalia had returned to Palermo and had chosen to live in a cave on Mount Pellegrino to escape the pilgrims and to live in peace her faith. Soon her fame arrived here too and the cave became frequented by many of her admirers, on the 4th september 1165 she was found dead.

The cult of Saint Rosalia was already very diffused immediately after her death, but only after 1624, the year in which her rests were found on Mount Pellegrino and taken in procession along the streets of Palermo freeing the city of pestilence that have been brought in by some ships,was officially acknowledged the holiness of Rosalia. Tradition narrates that Rosalia appeared in dream to a very sick woman,Girolama Gatto, promising to heal her if she went to mount Pellegrino where the saint would indicate the exact place in which her body had been buried. The research was started and on the 15th July 1624 her bones were found. The theologian and medical commission founded by the cardinal Giannettino Doria to exam the bones found,gave a deluding conclusion because the bones seemed to belong to more than one person. But then came another prodical sign:Vincenzo Bonelli, a soap-maker,who had lost his wife who died of plague, refuged to Mount Pellegrino and here Saint Rosalia appeared to him delegating him to talk to the cardinal assuring him that the rests found were hers and to no longer doubt and take these in procession along the streets of Palermo; the only way to free the city of the pestilence. And this is what happened. The feast that each year is held in Palermo around the 15 July is only the storical re-evocation of that miraculous event.In the same year, 1624, forty days after the discovery of the rests of Saint Rosalia on Mount Pellegrino,an inscription in ancient latin was found at the entrance of the cave at Quisquinia believed to have been carved by the saint herself: "I Rosalia, daughter of Sinibaldo, lord of Quisquina and of Mount of the Roses, have decided to live in this cave for the love of my Lord, Jesus Christ."