 It was built, on design by the arch. D. Basilio Gullo, for initiative of "donna" Maria Scafiti and her three clergymen brothers, Vincenzo, Mariano and Raffaele and the head priest Vincenzo Uccellatore.
On May 19 1780, the king Ferdinand gave Maria Scafiti the faculty to found in Bronte a College of Maria for the education and instruction of poor and orphan girls. The Maria’s colleges were instituted to help the weaker and needier society, with rules approved by the Pope, where was given free to young girls, poor and orphan or "figlie della ruota" (daughters of the “wheel”), shelter, maintenance and education religious and literary, “looking for them, if necessary, even in the streets”. Several of these were founded in Sicily and kept by generous benefactors in many communities (the first one was instituted in Palermo in 1731). Two years earlier (1778), with thee opening of the Capizzi College, founded by Ignazio Capizzi, the problem of formation and scholastic instruction for the young men had been resolved. But the girls of Bronte were excluded. It was unthinkable at the time that some of them could frequent the school rooms of the Capizzi College. In 1794 another generous priest, Giovanni Piccino, left all his patrimony, for the completion of the work to the college being built and to the poor girls who wanted to get married. | 
The college had many problems with the heirs of its benefactors, but eventually, the first floor was built and the college open; later, after nearly a century, with a royal decree of the 1 August 1875, the statute was finally approved and the school could start its much needed work.
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