Bagheria began as farmland belonging to Palermo and became something else in 1658 , when Giuseppe Branciforti, prince of Butera, built a villa here and withdrew from the political life of the capital. Others followed, and over the next century the Palermitan aristocracy built a remarkable concentration of summer villas along what became the town's main axis.

The most extraordinary is the Villa Palagonia , whose garden walls carry the grotesque stone figures — the mostri — commissioned by Ferdinando Francesco Gravina in the eighteenth century. Goethe visited in 1787 and disliked them intensely, which has done nothing to reduce their fame.

Around the villas grew a working town: the estates needed gardeners, builders, carters and household staff, and the plain around was planted with citrus — lemons above all — which became the area's principal export in the nineteenth century.

Bagheria produced the painter Renato Guttuso , born here in 1911, and the town appears throughout his work. The film director Giuseppe Tornatore is also from here.

In the second half of the twentieth century rapid and largely unregulated building filled much of the space between the villas — a transformation the town is still reckoning with.