Messina ( meh-SEE-nə, mih-; Italian: [mesˈsiːna] ⓘ) is a harbor city and the capital of the Metropolitan City of Messina in the autonomous island region of Sicily in Italy. It is the third largest city on the island of Sicily, and the 13th largest city in Italy, with a population of 216,458 inhabitants in the city proper and 594,074 in the metropolitan city as of 2026. It is located near the northeast corner of Sicily, at the Strait of Messina and it is an important access terminal to the Calabria region on the mainland, namely the town of Villa San Giovanni and the city of Reggio Calabria.
Founded by the Sicels with the name of Zancle in 757 BC, which in their language meant sickle, it was repopulated by Greek colonists of Magna Graecia and renamed Messana. The city was renamed Messina in the Byzantine period. It was a major Roman city that contracted under the Byzantine and Arab rule to rise sharply in importance during the Norman era. It reached the height of its prosperity between the late Middle Ages and the mid-17th century, when it competed with Palermo for the role of capital of the Kingdom of Sicily.
Put to fire and sword in 1678 after a historic anti-Spanish revolt that led to the annihilation of its ruling class, it was seriously damaged by an earthquake in 1783. In 1908, another earthquake destroyed the city almost entirely, causing the death of about half the population. Rebuilding started in 1912, largely in the Liberty style, and an orderly and regular network of wide and straight streets in a north-south direction were built. Being a strategic target, the city of the strait was heavily bombed by the Allies of World War II in 1943 during the landing in Sicily, being hit by about 6,500 tons of explosives in about 2,800 air raids and four naval bombardments. This event earned the city the Gold Medal of Military Valor. Winston Churchill visited Messina after the bombing. He came to the city in July 1943, during the time when the Allies were executing the invasion of Sicily.
Its port, for thousands of years has been one of the main commercial crossroads of the Mediterranean and only recently becoming a port of call for ferries to the continent, is the first in Italy in terms of the number of passengers in transit. According to Eurostat the FUA of the metropolitan area of Messina has, in 2014, 277,584 inhabitants. The city has been a Roman Catholic Archdiocese and Archimandrite seat since 1548 and is home to the University of Messina.
Names
History
Founded by Greek colonists of Magna Graecia in the 8th century BC, Messina was originally called Zancle (Ancient Greek: Ζάγκλη), from the Greek ζάγκλον meaning "scythe" because of the shape of its natural harbour (though a legend attributes the name to King Zanclus). A comune of its Metropolitan City, located at the southern entrance of the Strait of Messina, is to this day called 'Scaletta Zanclea'. Solinus wrote that the city of Metauros was established by people from Zancle.
In the early 5th century BC Anaxilas of Rhegium renamed it Messene (Μεσσήνη) in honour of the Greek city Messene (See also List of traditional Greek place names). Later, Micythus was the ruler of Rhegium and Zancle, and he also founded the city of Pyxus. The city was sacked in 397 BC by the Carthaginians and then reconquered by Dionysius I of Syracuse.
In 288 BC the Mamertines seized the city by treachery, killing all the men and taking the women as their wives. The city became a base from which they ravaged the countryside, leading to a conflict with the expanding regional empire of Syracuse. Hiero II, tyrant of Syracuse, defeated the Mamertines near Mylae on the Longanus River and besieged Messina. Carthage assisted the Mamertines because of a long-standing conflict with Syracuse over dominance in Sicily. When Hiero attacked a second time in 264 BC, the Mamertines petitioned the Roman Republic for an alliance, hoping for more reliable protection. Although initially reluctant to assist lest it encourage other mercenary groups to mutiny, Rome was unwilling to see Carthaginian power spread further over Sicily and encroach on Italy. Rome, therefore, entered into an alliance with the Mamertines. In 264 BC, Roman troops were deployed to Sicily, the first time a Roman army acted outside the Italian Peninsula. At the end of the First Punic War it was a free city allied with Rome. In Roman times Messina, then known as Messana, had an important pharos (lighthouse). Messana was the base of Sextus Pompeius, during his war against Octavian.
After the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 the city was successively ruled by Vandals and Ostrogoths, then by the Byzantine Empire from 535 (with a final siege by the Ostrogoth king Totila in 548), by the Aghlabids from September 843, by the Fatimids from 909, by the Byzantines again from 1038 (with previous brief conquests in 964 and before 976), and from October 1060 by the Normans (brothers Robert and Roger Guiscard and their successors). Under Byzantine rule, Messina became fragmented into a constellation of villages. The shift from the Church of Rome to the Patriarchate of Constantinople around 737 saw the expansion of Eastern Christian monasticism in the area. In the Islamic period, in particular from 877, the city was reduced to a military outpost against Byzantine Rometta and Calabria, although high-brow Fatimid architecture may also have existed. Messina was reconquered by the Byzantines in 1038 and successfully defended against the Arabs in 1041. Refortified by Roger I after 1081, the city grew quickly as a hub of Mediterranean trade during the twelfth century and became Sicily's second port (after Palermo), with a shipyard and Genoese, Pisan, Amalfitan and Egyptian commercial presence. It was briefly the seat of royal government during the regency of Adelaide del Vasto from 1101 to 1111. In 1131 Messina became a metropolitan see through a papal decision confirmed in 1166. In 1168 the Greek and Latin citizens lynched a governor, and in 1169 the city was hit by a major earthquake. In 1189 the English king Richard I ("The Lionheart") stopped at Messina en route to the Holy Land for the Third Crusade and briefly occupied the city after a dispute over the dowry of his sister, who had been married to William the Good, King of Sicily. Richard built a provisional castle named Mategriffon, later replaced in stone by Emperor Frederick II, who also established the mint for Sicily and Calabria at Messina. Under the Angevin rule, the admirals of the kingdom of Sicily had their residence in the city, as did Roger de Lauria after 1283. During the thirteenth century, the glazed cooking pots manufactured in Messina spread all across the island, as evidence of new consumption patterns. The city built up territorial influence: by 1199 it controlled Randazzo as a source of timber, by 1302 the plain of Milazzo with its grain output, and later also Castrogiovanni.
In 1277, Messina counted at least 30,000 inhabitants. One of the major cities on Sicily, Messina was heavily involved in the rivalry between the Anjou dynasty in Naples and the Aragonese House of Barcelona. Initially a stronghold of Angevin support on Sicily, by the end of April 1282 the city joined the revolt of the Sicilian Vespers and elected Alaimo da Lentini as captain of the commune, resulting in the city being subjected to a major siege by Charles I of Anjou. Messina remained a major naval base for the remainder of the ensuing twenty-year War of the Sicilian Vespers, and was besieged a second time in 1301. In 1303, the Catalan Company set sail from Messina to Constantinople. Despite the resumption of the Sicilian–Angevin conflict in the fourteenth century, the city continued to rely on the now hostile Calabria for its grain supply.
In the reign of Frederick III, the royal court met regularly in the city, and from 1321 onwards Messina was the de facto capital of the Kingdom of Trinacria on account of the ruler's permanent residence in the area. In 1345 Orlando d'Aragona, Frederick's illegitimate son, was the strategos of Messina.
In 1347 Messina was one of the first points of entry for the black death into Western Europe. Genoese galleys travelling from the infected city of Kaffa carried plague into the Messina ports. Kaffa had been infected via Asian trade routes and the siege of Kaffa from infected Mongol armies led by Janibeg; it was a departure point for many Italian merchants who fled the city to Sicily. Contemporary accounts from Messina tell of the arrival of "Death Ships" from the East, which floated to shore with all the passengers on board already dead or dying of plague. Plague-infected rats probably also came aboard these ships. The black death ravaged Messina and rapidly spread northward into mainland Italy from Sicily in the following few months.
In 1548 St. Ignatius founded there the first Jesuit college in the world, which later gave birth to the Studium Generale (the current University of Messina). The Christian ships that won the Battle of Lepanto (1571) left from Messina: the Spanish author Miguel de Cervantes, who took part in the battle, recovered for some time in the Grand Hospital. The city reached the peak of its splendour in the early 17th century, under Spanish domination: at the time it was one of the ten greatest cities in Europe.
In 1674 the city rebelled against the foreign garrison. It managed to remain independent for some time, thanks to the help of the French king Louis XIV, but in 1678, with the Peace of Nijmegen, it was reconquered by the Spaniards and sacked: the university, the senate and all the privileges of autonomy it had enjoyed since the Roman times were abolished. A massive fortress was built by the occupants and Messina decayed steadily. In 1743, 48,000 died of a second wave of plague in the city.
On 5 February 1783 an earthquake devastated much of the city, and it took decades to rebuild and rekindle the cultural life of Messina. In 1847 it was one of the first cities in Italy where Risorgimento riots broke out. In 1848 it rebelled openly against the reigning Bourbons, but was heavily suppressed again. Only in 1860, after the Battle of Milazzo, the Garibaldine troops occupied the city. One of the main figures of the unification of Italy, Giuseppe Mazzini, was elected deputy at Messina in the general elections of 1866. Another earthquake of less intensity damaged the city on 16 November 1894. The city was almost entirely destroyed by an earthquake and associated tsunami on the morning of 28 December 1908, killing about 100,000 people and destroying most of the ancient architecture. The city was largely rebuilt in the following year. However, thousands of residents displaced by the earthquake lived in shanty towns outside the city until the late 1930s, when further reconstruction finally commenced.
It incurred further damage from the massive Allied air bombardments of 1943; before and during the Allied invasion of Sicily. Messina, owing to its strategic importance as a transit point for Axis troops and supplies sent to Sicily from mainland Italy, was a prime target for the British and American air forces, which dropped some 6,500 tons of bombs in the span of a few months. These raids destroyed one-third of the city, and caused 854 deaths among the population. The city was awarded a Gold Medal of Military Valor and one for Civil Valor by the Italian government in memory of the event and the subsequent effort of reconstruction.
In June 1955 Messina was the location of the Messina Conference of Western European foreign ministers which led to the creation of the European Economic Community. The conference was held mainly in Messina's City Hall building (it), and partly in nearby Taormina. In November 2004 the city witnessed the Messina Declaration of Italian universities on open access to scientific knowledge.
The city is home to a small Greek-speaking minority, which arrived from the Peloponnese between 1533 and 1534 when fleeing the expansion of the Ottoman Empire. They were officially recognised in 2012.
Geography
Located in the north-eastern corner of Sicily, on the western shore of the Strait of Messina (Ionian Sea)— altitude 3 m (9.8 ft) above sea level— it extends for 213.75 km2 (82.53 sq mi) of municipal surface. Its extension on the coast (56 km (35 mi) from the coast of Giampilieri to the south to that of Orto Liuzzo to the north), which makes it the "longest" and most maritime city in Italy.
The municipality is located 96 km (60 mi) from Catania and 223 km (139 mi) from Palermo, squeezed between the Ionian and Tyrrhenian coasts and the Peloritani mountains, it overlooks with its large natural, military and commercial port, closed by the sickle-shaped peninsula of San Raineri, in front of Villa San Giovanni and a little further north than Reggio Calabria. Cape Peloro, in the northern part of the city, is instead opposite Scylla. In these waters is located the myth of Scylla and Charybdis, whose whirlpools are compared to the punishment of the souls of hell that go round and round and collide eternally ("qui la gente riddi" in Sicilian).
As the wave over Charybdis, / that breaks with the one it bumps into, / so must people laugh here.
— (Dante Alighieri, Divine Comedy, Canto VII of the Inferno.
An era of the Neogene, a fraction of the upper Miocene, a period known as the one in which the Mediterranean increased its salinity following the closing of the Strait of Gibraltar, takes the name of Messinian from the discovery in Messina of its characteristic rocks, the evaporites.