Hauteville family in the context of "Simon, Count of Syracuse"

Italy has been inhabited by humans since the Paleolithic. During antiquity, there were many peoples in the Italian peninsula, including Etruscans, Latins, Samnites, Umbri, Cisalpine Gauls, Greeks in Magna Graecia and others. Most significantly, Italy was the cradle of the Roman civilization. Rome was founded as a kingdom in 753 BC and became a republic in 509 BC. The Roman Republic then unified Italy forming a confederation of the Italic peoples and rose to dominate Western Europe, Northern Africa, and the Near East. The Roman Empire, established in 27 BC, ruled the Mediterranean region for centuries, contributing to the development of Western culture, philosophy, science and art.

During the early Middle Ages, Italy experienced the succession in power of Ostrogoths, Byzantines, Longobards and the Holy Roman Empire and fragmented into numerous city-states and regional polities, a situation that would remain until the unification of the country. These polities and the maritime republics, in particular Venice and Genoa, rose to prosperity. Eventually, the Italian Renaissance emerged and spread to the rest of Europe, bringing a renewed interest in humanism, science, exploration, and art with the start of the modern era. In the medieval and early modern era, Southern Italy was ruled by the Norman, Swabian and Angevin dynasties and the Aragonese, French and Spanish crowns. Central Italy was largely part of the Papal States.

The history of Sicily has been influenced by numerous ethnic groups. It has seen Sicily controlled by powers, including Carthaginian, Greek, Roman, Vandal and Ostrogoth, Byzantine, Arab, Norman, Aragonese, Spanish, Austrians, but also experiencing important periods of independence, as under the indigenous Sicanians, Elymians, Sicels, the Greek-Siceliotes (in particular Syracuse with its sovereigns), and later as County of Sicily, and Kingdom of Sicily. The Kingdom was founded in 1130 by Roger II, belonging to the Siculo-Norman family of Hauteville. During this period, Sicily was prosperous and politically powerful, becoming one of the wealthiest states in all of Europe. As a result of the dynastic succession, the Kingdom passed into the hands of the Hohenstaufen. At the end of the 13th century, with the War of the Sicilian Vespers between the crowns of Anjou and Aragon, the island passed to the latter. In the following centuries the Kingdom entered into the personal union with the Spaniard and Bourbon crowns, while preserving effective independence until 1816. Sicily was merged with the Kingdom of Italy in 1861.Although today an Autonomous Region, with special statute, of the Republic of Italy, it has its own distinct culture.

Sicily is both the largest region of the modern state of Italy and the largest island in the Mediterranean Sea. Its central location and natural resources ensured that it has been considered a crucial strategic location due in large part to its importance for Mediterranean trade routes. Cicero and al-Idrisi described respectively Syracuse and Palermo as the greatest and most beautiful cities of the Hellenic World and of the Middle Ages.

Tancred (fl. 1104) was the Count of Syracuse and a member of the Hauteville family. He was appointed by his relative Roger I of Sicily to govern one of the first and only feudal counties created in Sicily after the Norman conquest. His predecessor was Roger's son, Jordan. His descendant, Simon, still ruled Syracuse in the middle of the twelfth century.

The Palazzo dei Normanni (transl. 'Palace of the Normans'; Sicilian: Palazzu dî Nurmanni), also called Royal Palace of Palermo (Italian: Palazzo Reale di Palermo; Sicilian: Palazzu Riali), is a palace in Palermo, Sicily, Italy. It was the seat of the Kings of Sicily with the Hauteville dynasty and served afterwards as the main seat of power for the subsequent rulers of Sicily. Since 1946 it has been the seat of the Sicilian Regional Assembly. The building is the oldest royal residence in Europe; and was the private residence of the rulers of the Kingdom of Sicily and the imperial seat of Frederick II and Conrad IV.

Robert Guiscard (/ɡiːˈskɑːr/ ghee-SKAR, Modern French: [ʁɔbɛʁ ɡiskaʁ]; c. 1015 – 17 July 1085), also referred to as Robert de Hauteville, was a Norman adventurer remembered for his conquest of southern Italy and Sicily in the 11th century.

Robert was born into the Hauteville family in Normandy, the sixth son of Tancred de Hauteville and his wife Fressenda. He inherited the County of Apulia and Calabria from his brother in 1057, and in 1059 he was made Duke of Apulia and Calabria and Lord of Sicily by Pope Nicholas II. He was also briefly Prince of Benevento (1078–1081), before returning the title to the papacy.

Tancred of Galilee (also Tancred the Marquis; c. 1075 – 5 or 12 December 1112) was an Italian nobleman of Frankish origin, counted amongst the four main leaders of the First Crusade. He is credited as the first Christian to enter Jerusalem after its conquest in 1099. Present at the foundation of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, Tancred became Prince of Galilee and regent of the Principality of Antioch in his uncle Bohemond's behalf. He then married princess Cecilie of France, thus becoming son-in-law to King Philip I of the Franks, and brother-in-law to King Fulk of Jerusalem (Cecilie's half-brother).

Despite his usual misidentification as an Italo-Norman, it is well established that Tancred's link to the Norman House of Hauteville was solely through his mother Emma (a sister of Bohemond I of Antioch). His long debated paternal lineage, on the other hand, has since been placed in the Northern-Italian ruling house of the Aleramids, a family of Frankish origin.