MESSINA, city, Sicily, 7 m. south-south-west of the promon tory of Faro (anc. Promontorium Pelorum) which forms the north-east angle of the island, capital of the province of Messina and seat of an archbishop. Pop. (1931) 114,651 (town) ; 182,5o8 (commune). The site curves round the harbour, between it and the strongly fortified hills of Antennamare (highest point 3,707 ft.). The straits, which take their name from the town, are here about 31 m. wide (over 2 m. at Faro). The passage through them is extraordinarily beautiful. It was a flourishing and beautiful city when in 1908 early in the morning of December 28 one of the most disastrous earthquakes ever recorded destroyed it totally. At Messina about 84,000 lives were lost ; the damage was done chiefly by the shock and by the fires which broke out afterwards. The seismic wave which followed did vast damage elsewhere along the strait, notably at Reggio, Calabria, which was also totally destroyed. (See also EARTHQUAKE.) The facades of buildings at Messina in great part withstood the earthquake, but the remainder of the buildings was destroyed. The cathedral, begun in 1098, had a fine Gothic facade: the interior had mosaics in the apses dating from 1330, and the nave contained 26 granite columns, and a fine wooden roof of 1260. The rest was in the baroque style ; the high altar (containing the supposed let ter of the Virgin Mary to the people of Messina), richly decorated with marbles, lapis lazuli, etc., was begun in 1628 and completed in 1726. The building is now being carefully restored. The new residential quarters, occupying a far larger space to the south of the old town, have very wide streets and low buildings : while the public buildings are being re-erected rapidly on the old site. A museum has also been formed containing the works of art that were saved. The importance of Messina is due to its harbour, a circular basin open on the north only, formed by a strip of land curving round like a sickle, from which it took its original name, Zancle or rather 66:yaw', the Sicilian equivalent of the Greek 3fAravov, from which Trapani is derived).
Zancle was first founded by pirates from Cumae, and resettled from Cumae under Perieres, and from Chalcis under Crataemenes, in the first quarter of the 8th century B.C. Mylae was occupied very soon afterwards, but the first regular colony of Zancle was Himera (648 B.c.). After the capture of Miletus by the Persians in 494 B.c. Milesians and Samians joined Anaxilas of Regium in occupying Zancle in the absence of its king Skythes, and the name was changed to Messene, which is found on coins of the Samian type. About 48o Anaxilas established his authority at Messene. In 426 the Athenians gained the alliance of Zancle, but failed to obtain it in 415.
Messina fell into the hands of the Carthaginians (397 B.c.). They destroyed the city, but Dionysius recaptured and rebuilt it.
Timoleon finally expelled the Carthaginians in 343 B.c. In the wars between Agathocles of Syracuse and Carthage, Messina sup ported the latter. After Agathocles' death, his mercenaries, the Mamertines, treacherously seized the town about 282 B.C. They came to war with Hiero II. of Syracuse and obtained help from Rome. This led to the first Punic War. At its close (241 B.c.), Messina became a free and allied city. During the civil wars Messina held with Sextus Pompeius; and in 35 B.C. it was sacked by Octavian's troops, but it continued to flourish as a trading port, as the discovery of a large Roman necropolis (1st-3rd cent. A.D.) shows. In the division of the Roman empire it belonged to the East; and in A.D. 547 Belisarius collected his fleet here be fore crossing into Calabria. The Saracens took it (831), and it was the first permanent conquest of the Normans 0060.
In 1190 Richard I. of England, with his crusaders, passed six months in Messina. He quarrelled with Tancred, the last of the Hauteville dynasty, and sacked it. In 1194, with Sicily it passed to the Hohenstaufen under Henry VI., who died there in 1197; and after their fall was contended for by Peter I., of Aragon, and Charles I., of Anjou. At the time of the Sicilian Vespers (1282), Messina defended itself against Charles; Ruggiero di Loria de feated the French off the Faro; and from 1282 to 1713 Messina remained a possession of the Spanish royal house. In 1571 the fleet fitted out by the Holy League against the Turk assembled at Messina, and in the same year its commander, Don John of Austria, celebrated a triumph in the city for his victory at Le panto (statue in the Piazza dell' Annunziata). Internal quarrels between the Merli, or aristocratic faction, and the Malvezzi, or democratic faction, fomented by the Spaniards, helped to ruin the city (1671-1678). The French at first came to its aid, but then abandoned it. In 1743 the plague carried off 40,000 inhabi tants. The city was partially destroyed by earthquake in 1783. During the revolution of 1848 against the Bourbons of Naples, Messina was bombarded for three consecutive days. In 1854 the deaths from cholera numbered about 15,00o. Garibaldi landed in Sicily in 1860, and Messina was the last city in the island taken from the Bourbons and made a part of united Italy under Victor Emmanuel.
Messina was the birthplace of Dicaearchus, the historian (c. 322 B.c.) ; Aristocles, the Peripatetic; Euhemerus, the rationalist (c. 316 B.c.) ; Stefano Protonotario, Mazzeo di Ricco and Tommaso di Sasso, poets of the court of Frederick II. (A.D. 125o) ; and Antonello da Messina, the painter (1447-1499). During the 15th century the gram marian, Constantine Lascaris, taught in Messina ; and Bessarion was for a time archimandrite there. (T. A.)