Messina
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
the chief town and seaport of Sicily. It is situated on the strait of Messina which separates Sicily from the mainland. The harbor has the shape of an oldfashioned grain sickle, and is considered one of the safest and most commodious in the Mediterranean. The population in 1907 was 149,000. In 1908 an earthquake was attended with a frightful loss of life. It is believed that 200,000 persons perished in Messina and the region adjacent, but the full extent of the disaster can never be known. Messina was reported a total wreck. The devastation begun by the earthquake was completed by fire. Prior to this disaster, a handsome quay, adorned with statues and fountains, fronted the harbor. The city was paved with lava blocks. There were notable buildings, including a Gothic cathedral, the interior of which was supported by ancient columns of granite thought to have belonged at one time to a temple of Neptune. There were important manufactures of silk. The city did an export business of $10,000,000 a year in silks, olives, olive oil, linseed, oranges, lemons, corn, wine, salted fish, sumac for tanning, goatskins, sulphur, and other Sicilian products. Messina has long been noted as a market for citrous fruits. In fact, the word apfelsine, the German name for orange, is a contraction of apfel-aus-Messina. The excellence of the harbor and its proximity to the mainland, as well as the roads leading out to all parts of the island can hardly fail to cause the city to be rebuilt. It was founded a thousand years before Christ.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Aiton's guessed in 1910 that "200,000 persons perished" in the 1908 quake; modern estimates put the toll at roughly 75,000-82,000, most of them in Messina itself, still the deadliest earthquake in European history. The prediction that the city "can hardly fail to be rebuilt" was correct: Messina was reconstructed to a low-rise, anti-seismic plan, bombed again in 1943, and now holds about 220,000 people, with the Norman cathedral restored and fitted in 1933 with a celebrated astronomical clock. The silk manufacture is gone and the citrus export trade much reduced; the ferries across the strait still run, and the bridge to the mainland, argued over since the nineteenth century, remains unbuilt despite repeated government approvals. One small correction: German Apfelsine is not "Apfel aus Messina" but comes from Dutch appelsien, "apple of China."
Written for this edition, 2026.