All articles about Messina

About Messina

Messina is the first Sicilian city most people cross into and the one almost nobody stops in. The ferries from Calabria dock here, the motorway to Catania and Palermo starts here, and the overwhelming majority of arrivals drive straight through. That is understandable, and it also means the city is judged almost entirely on a first impression formed through a car window.

It is worth knowing why it looks the way it does. The 1908 earthquake and the tsunami that followed destroyed most of Messina and killed tens of thousands of people across the strait. What stands today is a rebuilt city — wide, gridded, low — not a medieval old town, and expecting Ortigia or Cefalù here leads to disappointment that has nothing to do with the place itself.

There is one genuine reason to time a stop rather than pass through. The bell tower beside the cathedral holds the largest astronomical clock in the world, and every day at noon it performs: a gilded lion roars, a cockerel crows, and figures act out the Sicilian Vespers to Schubert's Ave Maria. It runs about twelve minutes, it happens once, and if your ferry lands at two in the afternoon you have missed it.

Beyond that the piazza itself, the Renaissance Orion Fountain in front of the cathedral, and the view across the strait to Calabria make a comfortable couple of hours — which is roughly what Messina is for.