A comune of its Metropolitan City, located at the southern entrance of the Strait of Messina, is to this day called 'Scaletta Zanclea'.

When Hiero attacked a second time in 264 BC, the Mamertines petitioned the Roman Republic for an alliance, hoping for more reliable protection.

Although initially reluctant to assist lest it encourage other mercenary groups to mutiny, Rome was unwilling to see Carthaginian power spread further over Sicily and encroach on Italy.

One of the major cities on Sicily, Messina was heavily involved in the rivalry between the Anjou dynasty in Naples and the Aragonese House of Barcelona.

Messina remained a major naval base for the remainder of the ensuing twenty-year War of the Sicilian Vespers, and was besieged a second time in 1302.

Contemporary accounts from Messina tell of the arrival of "Death Ships" from the East, which floated to shore with all the passengers on board already dead or dying of plague.

[citation needed] In 1548 St. Ignatius founded there the first Jesuit college in the world, which later gave birth to the Studium Generale (the current University of Messina).

[citation needed] However, thousands of residents displaced by the earthquake lived in shanty towns outside the city until the late 1930s, when further reconstruction finally commenced.

Messina, owing to its strategic importance as a transit point for Axis troops and supplies sent to Sicily from mainland Italy, was a prime target for the British and American air forces, which dropped some 6,500 tons of bombs in the span of a few months.

The city is home to a small Greek-speaking minority, which arrived from the Peloponnese between 1533 and 1534 when fleeing the expansion of the Ottoman Empire.

[17] Messina has a subtropical Mediterranean climate with long, hot summers with low diurnal temperature variation and consistently dry weather.

It is rather rainier than Reggio Calabria on the other side of the Messina Strait, a remarkable climatic difference for such a small distance.

For long-distance transport it counts some InterCity and ICN night trains to Rome, linking it also with Milan, Turin, Venice, Genoa, Bologna, Florence, and other cities.

Thus, a comb service is created, with interchange stops at which the buses to and from the villages terminate, and with the tram which reaches a frequency of about 20 minutes.

[25] About 36 different routes reach every part of the city and also the modern Messina tramway[26] (at "Repubblica" stop, on station's square), opened in 2003.