It is a small mountain hamlet, which rises in the highest part of the municipal territory at an altitude of about 580 meters. The toponym is a pejorative form of puntale (‘boulder, huge stone’, ‘peak, top of a mountain’); in fact, the locality stands on a hill that has the shape of a very sharp cone, near the protruding rocks that form the steep slope known as Salto del Corvo.

The first documented record of the toponym dates back to the 18th century, specifically to 1743, the year of the Royal Visitation carried out in the Sicilian territory by Don Giovanni Angelo De Ciocchis on behalf of King Charles III of Bourbon. In this document, the district of Puntalazzo is mentioned for the first time.

The original inhabited nucleus consisted of a few houses and a small church, still visible today, which seems to date back to the 17th century. The village developed in the second half of the nineteenth century, as also evidenced by the construction of the church starting in 1851 and completed in 1927, dedicated to Maria SS. Assunta (Our Lady of the Assumption).