Villa San Giovanni (Southern Calabrian: Villa San Giuanni) is a port city and a municipality in the Metropolitan City of Reggio Calabria of Calabria, Italy. In 2010 its population was 13,747 with a decrease of 2.5% until 2016 and in 2020 an increase of 3.7%. It is an important terminal for access to Sicily and is also known for being the location of several police films.
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 Strait of Messina is a narrow strait between the eastern tip of Sicily (Punta del Faro) and the western tip of Calabria (Punta Pezzo) in Southern Italy. It connects the Tyrrhenian Sea to the north with the Ionian Sea to the south, within the central Mediterranean. At its narrowest point, between Torre Faro and Villa San Giovanni, it is 3.1 km (1.9 mi) wide. At the city of Messina, it is 5.1 km (3.2 mi) wide. The strait's maximum depth is about 250 m (820 ft).
The strait has strong tidal currents that create a unique marine ecosystem. The rock in the town of Scilla, Calabria at the north of the strait and a natural whirlpool in the northern portion of the strait have been linked to the Greek legend of Scylla and Charybdis. In some circumstances, the mirage of Fata Morgana can be observed when looking at Sicily from Calabria. With its bottleneck shape, it is also a compulsory point of transit in the migration of many bird species.