Strait of Messina

Southern Italy, also known as Meridione ([meriˈdjoːne]) or Mezzogiorno ([ˌmɛddzoˈdʒorno] ), is a macroregion of Italy consisting of its southern regions.

The term "Mezzogiorno" today mostly refers to the regions that are associated with the people, lands or culture of the historical and cultural region that was once politically under the administration of the former Kingdoms of Naples and Sicily (officially denominated as one entity Regnum Siciliae citra Pharum and ultra Pharum, i.e. "Kingdom of Sicily on the other side of the Strait" and "across the Strait") and which later shared a common organization into Italy's largest pre-unitarian state, the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies.

Calabria is a region in Southern Italy. It is a peninsula bordered by the region Basilicata to the north, the Ionian Sea to the east, the Strait of Messina to the southwest, which separates it from Sicily, and the Tyrrhenian Sea to the west. It has 1,832,147 residents as of 2025 across a total area of 15,222 km (5,877 sq mi). Catanzaro is the region's capital.

Calabria is the birthplace of the name of Italy, given to it by the Ancient Greeks who settled in this land starting from the 8th century BC. They established the first cities, mainly on the coast, as Greek colonies. During this period Calabria was the heart of Magna Graecia, home of key figures in history such as Pythagoras, Herodotus and Milo.

Sicily (Italian and Sicilian: Sicilia), officially the Sicilian Region (Italian: Regione Siciliana; Sicilian: Riggiuni Siciliana), is an island in the central Mediterranean Sea and one of the twenty regions of Italy, situated south of the Italian Peninsula in continental Europe. With 4.7 million inhabitants, including 1.2 million in and around the capital city of Palermo, it is both the largest and most populous island in the Mediterranean Sea.

Sicily is named after the Sicels, who inhabited the eastern part of the island during the Iron Age. Sicily has a rich and unique culture in arts, music, literature, cuisine, and architecture. Its most prominent landmark is Mount Etna, the tallest active volcano in Europe, and one of the most active in the world, currently 3,403 m (11,165 ft) high. The island has a typical Mediterranean climate. It is separated from Calabria by the Strait of Messina. It is one of the five Italian autonomous regions and is considered part of Southern Italy.

Messina (/mɛˈsiːnə/ mess-EE-nə, US also /mɪˈ-/ miss-; Italian: [mesˈsiːna] ; Sicilian: Missina [mɪsˈsiːna]; Greek: Μεσσήνη) is a harbour city and the capital of the Italian Metropolitan City of Messina. It is the third largest city on the island of Sicily, and the 13th largest city in Italy, with a population of 216,918 inhabitants in the city proper and 595,948 in the metropolitan city as of 2025. It is located near the northeast corner of Sicily, at the Strait of Messina and it is an important access terminal to Calabria region, Villa San Giovanni, Reggio Calabria on the mainland.

Founded by the Sicels with the name of Zancle in 757 BC, which in their language meant sickle, it was repopulated by Greek colonists of Magna Graecia and renamed Messana. The city was renamed Messina in the Byzantine age. It was an important Roman, and then Greek-Byzantine city, but in 843 it was completely destroyed by the Arabs. Almost abandoned during the Islamic period, it rose again in the Norman era and reached the height of its grandeur between the late Middle Ages and the mid-17th century, when it competed with Palermo for the role of capital of the Kingdom of Sicily.

The province of Reggio Calabria (Italian: provincia di Reggio Calabria) was a province in the Calabria region of Italy. It was the southernmost province in mainland Italy and is separated from the island of Sicily by the Strait of Messina. The capital was the city of Reggio.

It was effectively replaced by the Metropolitan City of Reggio Calabria in 2017.

The etymology of the name of Italy has been the subject of reconstructions by linguists and historians. Considerations extraneous to the specifically linguistic reconstruction of the name have formed a rich corpus of solutions that are either associated with legend (the existence of a king named Italus) or in any case strongly problematic (such as the connection of the name with the grape vine, vitis in Latin).

One theory is that the name derives from the word Italói, a term with which the ancient Greeks designated a tribe of Sicels who had crossed the Strait of Messina and who inhabited the extreme tip of the Italic Peninsula, near today's Catanzaro. This is attested by the fact that the ancient Greek peoples who colonized present-day Calabria, referred to themselves as Italiotes, that is, inhabitants of Italy. This group of Italian people had worshiped the simulacrum of a calf (vitulus, in Latin), and the name would therefore mean "inhabitants of the land of calves (young bulls)". In any case, it is known that in archaic times the name indicated the part located in the extreme south of the Italian Peninsula.

Reggio di Calabria (Southern Calabrian: Riggiu; Calabrian Greek: Ρήγι, romanized: Rìji), commonly and officially referred to as Reggio Calabria, or simply Reggio by its inhabitants, is the largest city in Calabria as well as the seat of the Metropolitan City of Reggio Calabria. As of 2025, it has 168,572 inhabitants and is the twenty-first most populous city in Italy, after Modena and other Italian cities. Reggio Calabria is located near the center of the Mediterranean and is known for its climate, ethnic and cultural diversity. It is the third economic centre of mainland Southern Italy. About 511,935 people live in its metropolitan city.

Reggio is located on the "toe" of the Italian Peninsula and is separated from the island of Sicily by the Strait of Messina. It is situated on the slopes of the Aspromonte, a long, craggy mountain range that runs up through the centre of the region.