The close of the same name already appears in Homer's Odyssey as a place of abode of the sea monsters Scylla and Charybdis.
Archaeological findings attest to the presence of a Bronze Age village. On the same site was founded around 730 BC, one of the first Greek colonies in Sicily. The colony was given a name of Sicilian origin, Zancle (with the meaning of "sickle," referring to the shape of sandy arm of San Raineri, which closes the great natural harbor), which confirms the presence of indigenous peoples. According to the historian Thucydides
greek settlers came from the colony of Cuma calcidese in Magna Grecia (led by Periere) and the same homeland of Chalkis on the Greek island of Evia (conducted by Cratemene), also of the same motherland Cuma. According to the geographer Strabo Latin settlers were from Naxos, the first colony calcidese island. The city was built near the northeast corner of the island, in a strategic position of the highest importance. Soon after, Chalcis founded another colony on the opposite side of the strait, Reghion today Reggio Calabria, thereby controlling the all-important arm of the sea.
After the Persian conquest of Ionia were joined by other settlers from the island of Samos and other places in the region. In the early fifth century BC, were expelled from Anassila Samii, tyrant of Reggio, who held the domain on both sides of the strait, and gave the town its name Messanion, the original homeland of his ancestors, Messinia, Greece. After the death of the tyrant in 461 BC, both towns drove out their children.
In 396 BC it was destroyed by the Carthaginians, led by Imilcone, but the tyrant Dionysius of Syracuse later rebuilt and repopulated with new settlers. It was liberated from the domination of Syracuse by Timoleon, and subsequently re-taken by Agathocles. In 288 BC it was settled by the mercenaries Mamertini, race Sabellic.
Mamertines, at war with Hiero II of Syracuse, called to the aid of the Romans and caused the outbreak of the First Punic War between Rome and Carthage.
-----------------------------> Nineteenth and twentieth centuries <---------------------------
was Messina, with the motions of September 1, 1847, beginning with the Italian Risorgimento, in 1848, again rebelled against the Bourbons, he suffered eight months for heavy bombardment by the guns of his own citadel, in the hands of the enemy survivors, and had to once again surrender to the army that the Bourbon fleet managed to land. The Messina defended themselves with great heroism, but eventually had to yield to the Bourbons.
In 1848, during the uprisings in Messina, the surgeon Ferdinand Palasciano born in Capua and official of the Bourbons, she worked to provide medical aid to one's enemies despite being threatened with Shooting of General Bourbon Filangeri. This experience exposed in his subsequent statements to Congress Pontaniana International Academy of Naples in 1861 had a great response in Europe and was the basis of the Geneva Convention of 1864 that gave birth to the Red Cross.
On 27 July 1860, the Garibaldi, victorious in Milazzo, entered the city, though Bourbon soldiers in the citadel resisted until the spring of the following year (he fell March 12, 1861). A few months later he received the visit of Messina Vittorio Emanuele II, but the unification of Italy led to the abolition of tax privileges and commercial premises, the restoration of which the city hoped. In 1866 Giuseppe Mazzini was
elected to the Chamber of Deputies in the electoral college to Messina. The Chamber of Deputies blocked the vote with 181 votes against 107 of Messina, the reasons for annulment with the sentencing to death of Mazzini for Genoa riots of 1858. The electoral college will issue an opinion rielesse again for the second time Mazzini as his deputy, who resigned Feb. 7, 1867, however, to the office. Ilya Ilyich Mechnikov
In 1884, also known as Elia Metchnikoff, discovered in Messina, where he had moved a few years from Russia, phagocytosis, ie the process of ingestion by the cell of large particles, which is also part defense mechanisms of vertebrates against bacterial infection. For this Mechnikov discovered in 1908 was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
Messina was severely damaged by the earthquake and tsunami of 28 December 1908, which killed about 70,000 of its inhabitants and was later rebuilt on the same site with a new rational urban planning. It was again destroyed by the huge Anglo-American bombing of 1943, which caused thousands of deaths. For the tenacity to withstand disasters and reborn once again, the city was decorated with a gold medal for military valor and a civil valor.
First to June 3, 1955, the city hosted the Conference of Messina, fundamental and crucial step that led to the creation of Euratom and the EEC (European Economic Community), later to become the European Union. The
October 1, 2009, some villages and hamlets of the town, were hit by a flood, which caused dozens of deaths and more than five hundred people homeless.
