Exploring Messina

Visiting Messina

I got breakfast the next morning at the same cafe along the tree-lined Viale san Martino.

The standard cornetto e doppio caffè, a real Italian breakfast including caffè, real coffee.

I reviewed the history of Messina over breakfast. It's so calamitous that you suspect that parts are made up.

Continuing the history of Messina started on the first page...

Richard Coeur de Lion and Philip Augustus of France arrived in 1190 to spend the winter in Messina before continuing to their Crusade in March 1191. Richard felt that the city had offended his sister Joanna, widow of William II, ruler of Sicily. So, as a warm-up to the Crusade, he had his troops destroy much of the city.

Other crusader armies besieged and sometimes sacked and burned Messina in 1282 and 1301 while traveling between France and the Holy Land.

The Duomo was consecrated in 1197, with Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV and his Queen Constance attending. Henry then stayed in town long enough to die of dysentery in Messina later that year.

The Duomo was then destroyed for the first of several times in 1254, when mourners had lit too many candles during the funeral for Conrad IV, the son of Emperor Frederick II.

It was rebuilt and then destroyed again and again, in 1783 and 1908 by severe earthquakes, and in 1943 by an incendiary bomb meant for the harbor.

The Black Death arrived in Messina in 1347. A Mongol army had catapulted infected corpses into the city of Theodosia, also called Kaffa, on the Black Sea. Genoese ships arriving from Theodosia carried loads of passengers who were all dead or dying, along with rats who were also infected by the bubonic plague.

A revolt against Spanish rule led to the city's near-destruction in 1678.

More outbreaks of plague and cholera struck the city, with particularly bad ones in 1743 and 1854. Messina's large silk industry was wiped out in the late 1800s by the appearance of a parasite that killed the silkworms.

A severe earthquake in 1783 destroyed much of the city. A worse earthquake and tsunami in 1908 were even more destructive. Then the city was heavily bombed by the Allies in 1943.

The harbor front looked more prosperous in sunlight.

Santissima Annunziata dei Catalani

Chiesa della Santissima Annunziata dei Catalani or the Catalans' Church of the Most Holy Annunciation is a 12th-century Norman church. Much of it dates from the original 12th century construction, the three doors at the west end were added in the 13th century. Like other old structures that managed to survive the severe earthquakes of 1783 and 1908, it is now about two meters below the surrounding ground.

It's in an Arab-Norman style, with details from the Fatimid Caliphate Arabs blended into Norman architecture.

The interior shows a mix of types and colors of stones, with bricks in arches and domes.

It has some icons from Slavic-speaking lands, with text in early Cyrillic script.

Santa Maria degli Alemanni

Chiesa di Santa Maria degli Alemanni or the Church of Holy Mary of the Germans is one of the few Gothic churches in Sicily. It was founded and built around 1220 by the Teutonic Order or the Teutonic Knights.

An adjacent hospital was built around the same time, to care for members of the order returning from the Crusade in Palestine.

Over three centuries later, the Spanish author Miguel de Cervantes, author of Don Quixote de la Mancha, was cared for in the hospital after being wounded in the battle of Lepanto.

There had been armed conflict for centuries among the Finnic, Baltic, and Slavic people along the Baltic shore, and the Saxon and Danish people to their west and south. But that had been purely for economic reasons, and Pope Alexander III had issued a call for a crusade against the Estonians and "other pagans in those parts" in 1171 or 1172.

The Teutonic Order answered the Pope's call for crusades in northeastern Europe. Orthodox Christianity seemed pagan enough for the Teutonic Knights and the Pope, so they made multiple attempts to invade Russian territory and force Novgorod, recovering from recent Mongol and Swedish invasions, to submit to the Pope.

The Teutonic Knights were defeated by the forces of Prince Alexander Nevsky, Александр Ярославич Невский, in the Battle of the Ice in 1242. The attempted invasion of Mother Russia by the Teutonic Knights and the Battle on the Ice that sent them running is depicted in the 1938 film by Sergei Eisenstein, and again in Ralph Bakshi's 1977 film Wizards. Both movies warn of 20th century Teutonic forces and the associated fascism. Then George Lucas used the same Teutonic helmet look for Vader.

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The church was largely undamaged in the 1908 earthquake. However, in the following reconstruction plan for the city the church's west façade was demolished and the building was shortened in length. It underwent further reconstruction work in 1949–1951, probably repairing damage from Allied bombing raids in 1943.

To the Duomo

In Italy, il Duomo is the most prominent church in a city. It has features of a cathedral, but may not be the seat of a bishop and thus not really be a cathedral.

Messina's Duomo is a cathedral because it's the seat of an archbishop, as indicated by the double crossbar on the cross above its façade.

The bell tower houses what purports to be the largest astronomical clock in the world. There are many categories of "Largest clock in the world", to the point that when a city reaches a certain level of self-importance, it needs a "World's Most" something, and a large clock in some narrowly defined subcategory is a reasonably easy solution.

Three-meter-tall mechanical figures representing 13th century heroines ring bells at noon, commemorating episodes of the city's rather disastrous history and religious festivals.

The rotating sphere and disc-shaped faces on the right side indicate the phase of the moon, the position of the sun within the constellations of the zodiac, and a perpetual calendar.

However... The tower was designed to house the astronomical clock, and the clock was designed and built in 1933 by a firm in Strasbourg. Both the tower and clock are from the time of Mussolini's rule.

The Duomo was destroyed by fire in 1254, by earthquakes in 1783 and 1908, and by a bomb in 1943. The clock tower from the 1930s managed to survive the bomb that re-destroyed the adjacent church a decade later.

The pros like the 1930s clock tower and the post-World-War-II cathedral, so I'm not complaining.

Near the entrance are the above photographs of the result of the 1908 earthquake.

It makes me think of how Buddhism and Shintō emphasize impermanence. Japan's Great Shrine complex at Ise includes 125 Shintō shrines, of which the Inner Shrine or Kaikū is Shintō's most sacred shrine.

Each of those 125 shrines is actually a adjacent pair of identical sites. Every twenty years, an identical shrine is built on the empty site. The enshrined kami is transferred into the new structure, and the old shrine is disassembled.

So, the Shintō shrines at Ise are ancient, literally of prehistoric design and origin, but they're also always new.

With earthquakes, the reconstruction isn't planned. However, there is a similar intent of always having a structure just like the original.

Here's the nave, the main space within the church. Rows of columns divide the nave from side aisles. As is frequently the case, the roofs above the aisles is lower than the roof of the name, allowing clerestory windows near the nave's roof to provide more light. All of this makes for a basilica design, from the Greek basilikí stoá or βασιλική στοά, or just βασιλική. "Basilica" is a term of architecture. Confusingly, the Roman Catholic church now uses the same word to designate a church given privileges to perform certain ceremonies, whether it's built this way or not.

There are three apses, semicircular spaces, at the heads of the nave and both aisles.

Here are the central apse and the apse of the right aisle.

Some of the organ pipes are beside the right apse, others are across the church next to the left aisle's apse.

Two views of the central apse.

The left aisle's apse and the central apse.

An elaborate Christmas crêche is an Italian tradition, I think especially so in Napoli and south through Sicily. I have seen and enjoyed the large and elaborate one that the Metropolitan Museum of New York puts on display annually.

Back out in the piazza, the Orion Fountain was finished in 1553. This relates to the large and elaborate fountain just off Piazza Bellini in Palermo. It was completed a year or two after this one, when Messina and Palermo were competing to be the most opulent cities on Sicily.

The people of Messina had wanted Michaelangelo to design their fountain, but his pupil Giovanni Angelo Montorsoli got the commission. Montorsoli liked Messina, staying on for another ten years with no apparent plan for return until the Pope ordered him to get back to Tuscany. The fountain has four large figures representing major rivers: the Nile, Tiber, Ebro, and Camaro. At the top is Orion, the mythical founder of the city, with his dog Sirius.

Lunch Near the Duomo

Pasta alla Norma is a distinctively Sicilian dish. The legend says that it's named in honor of Vincenzo Bellini, the Sicilian composer of the opera Norma. Supposedly the Italian writer Nino Martoglio said "This is a real 'Norma'!", meaning a masterpiece. Although...the legend seems to have first appeared decades after Martoglio's death in 1921. Whatever. The pasta with eggplant is very good.

I had been in Italy before, but only around Napoli and then north around Umbria and Tuscany. On that trip, in 2009, limoncello was popular as a digestivo after a meal, or as a standalone drink mid-afternoon or up into the evening. But on this trip, in 2025, spritzes were all the rage. No small glasses of chilled limoncello.

I had, as usual, selected a place to get a meal based on there being no English-language signs threatening "ENGLISH BREAKFAST" or "AMERICAN BREAKFAST", and no English-speaking tout hassling passers-by. However, my waiter happened to speak English, so I asked about the shift in limoncello. He shrugged and attributed it to changing trends. But I could have one, they were now referring to it as "limoncello bitters".

Hmmm. There is some bitterness, given all the essential oil extracted from the lemon zest, but there's a lot of sugar in the final mix. I think of limoncello as a very sweet drink, not a bitter one. But yes, please, limoncello bitters as a digestivo.

To the Harbor

Several major streets in Messina used low dividers to separate the dedicated bus and taxi lane from other traffic.

The circular Piazza Antonello where Corso Cavour crosses Via Consolato del Mare is surrounded by four monumental buildings. The post office, seen immediately below, the province's administrative seat, the town hall, and an arcade with cafe, offices and shops.

I continued toward the harbor.

The Neptune Fountain is in front of the 1920s Prefecture building with a view out into the harbor. Its statues are 19th century copies, the originals are in the regional museum.

Trains cross the strait on specially designed large ferries. An overnight train runs every night in each direction between Milano, near the Swiss border, and both Palermo and Siracusa. Also, two overnight and two daytime trains run daily in each direction between Rome and Sicily. Ferries carry the trains across the strait between Messina and Reggio di Calabria.

A southbound train is split in half to load it onto the ferry in Reggio di Calabria. On the Messina side, one half continues west to Palermo, the other half goes south to Siracusa. Northbound, half-length trains from Palermo and Siracusa arrive in Messina, cross the strait side-by-side in a ferry, and are connected into a single train in Reggio di Calabria.

The Trans-European Transport Networks plan their grand Line 1, a link between Berlin and Palermo. That has increased the pressure on Italy to proceed with the bridge project.

Forte San Salvatore was built in 1537–1540 to defend the harbor, replacing a Greek monastery. In 1934, the statue of the Madonna della Lettera was placed there on its sixty-meter stone column.

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According to the legend, the Apostle Paul arrived in Messina in 42 CE and began converting the local population to Christianity. When he returned to Palestine, a delegation from Messina wanted to accompany him so that they could meet the Virgin Mary and ask for a blessing for their city. Still citing the legend, the delegation Messina met her on 3 June 42 CE and, in gratitude, she gave them a letter of blessing, written in Hebrew and bound with a lock of her hair. It contained the phrase "I bless you and your city."

The letter may be in the Vatican archives. Or it may have been lost in one of the several fires that destroyed the cathedral. Or it may have never existed. As for the hair, the Duomo has an elaborate reliquary containing the Relic of the Hair of the Virgin.

The only mention of Sicily in Luke's Acts of the Apostles, which describes Paul's conversion and following travels, is in its 28th and final chapter. The passage quoted below starts as they are leaving Malta, a much smaller island south of Sicily. Rhegium is called Reggio Calabria today, it's the city across the strait from Messina. According to Luke, Paul spent just one day in Rhegium, across the strait from Messina, before heading north toward Rome. Puteoli was a harbor city on the north side of the Gulf of Napoli, about 8 kilometers west of Napoli. It was the largest transit port of Rome.

Pliny the Elder wrote in the first century CE about bridging the Strait of Messina with a string of connected boats, linking the island of Sicily to the peninsula of Italy. Talk about bridges continued through the centuries. After Napoleon suggested a tunnel joining France to Britain, a tunnel here was proposed.

A power line spanned the strait from 1955 to 1993, upgrading from 150 kV to 220 kV in 1971. It was replaced in 1985 with a 380 kV three-phase submarine cable. The two 232-meter steel pylons, among the highest in the world, still stand.

The following aeronautical chart, compiled in 1962, shows the power line as a thin solid black line passing diagonally through the "D" in the "LID34" area.

The problem is that the area is geologically active. The African Plate is moving north and sliding beneath the Eurasian Plate. The two ends of a tunnel or bridge would move with respect to each other as the plates slide.

In addition, the strait is deep and the currents are swift. Homer described Scylla and Charybdis in his Odyssey, and now a dangerous whirlpool near the mouth of the strait is said to have possibly been an inspiration.

Portion of aeronautical chart TPC G-2B from the Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection at the University of Texas at Austin.

Screenshot of an earthquake and volcano tracking smartphone app. Red, blue, and black lines indicate plate boundaries. Relative motion of about 7.9 mm/year along all of them. Blue is a rift boundary, moving apart. Red are subduction boundaries, the African plate moving under the Eurasian plate. Black is where they're sliding past each other. Triangles are volcanoes.

There have been many proposals for a bridge. During my visit in 2025, the government announced that it had chosen a design and construction would start soon. Its central span would be 3,300 meters long, making this the longest suspension bridge in the world. Concern remains that the Cosa Nostra of Sicily and the 'Ndrangheta of Calabria will insert themselves into the project.

Dinner

On another day in Messina, I had dinner along Via Garibaldi. This is pasta with swordfish, and a half-liter of the house red wine.

After dinner I asked for a limoncello digestivo, asking specifically for limoncello bitters and not spritz. Of course they brought me limoncello spritz. Sigh. The kids these days.

I drank the spritz, and then as a corrective, stopped for gelato on my way back to the hotel.

Preparing to Leave for Taormina

On my last morning in Messina, I had cornetto e doppio caffè at the usual place, then returned to the hotel to pack my things and check out. Then I got lunch at a different establishment along the tree-lined Viale san Martino.

Lunch was bow-tie pasta with salmon.

After lunch I went to Messina Centrale, the main train station, and bought a ticket to Taormina, a short distance south along the coast.

It was a short ride south to Taormina.