History
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See also: Timeline of Messina
Ancient Roman bronze coin minted in Messina, 264 BC
13th-century coins minted during the reign of Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor, in Messina.
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.
17th century map of Messina
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.
1783 Messina earthquake
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. Refortified by Roger I after 1081, Messina 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 [it] 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.
Giuseppe Garibaldi's entry into Messina during the Expedition of the Thousand in 1860, an event of the unification of Italy
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.
An image of the 1908 Messina earthquake aftermath. Ruins of the Duomo.
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.
Greek minority of Messina flag
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.
