It was created in 1667 for the aristocrat Giulio Tomasi, 2nd Duke of Palma.

The Palazzo Lampedusa in Palermo was badly damaged during the Allied invasion of Sicily in 1943.

The famous Italian novelist Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa was the last to hold officially the title of prince before the end of the Kingdom of Italy.

About a decade later, shortly before he died, he wrote The Leopard, a novel based in part on the life of his great-grandfather, Don Giulio.

During the same period in which he was writing The Leopard, Giuseppe Tomasi adopted his own distant cousin Gioacchino Lanza, thereafter known as Gioacchino Lanza Tomasi, but the latter did not use the extinct noble title.