The city centre, consisting primarily of Liberty buildings, has a linear development along the coast with parallel streets, and the promenade is dotted with rare magnolias and exotic palms.

Mythical accounts record a series of different peoples in the region, including the Osci (sometimes referred to as Opici), Trojans, Oenotrians, Ligures, Ausones, Mamertines, Taureani, Sicels, Morgetes and Itali.

The term 'Italia' initially referred to the area around Reggio itself, before expanding to cover present-day southern Calabria (later known as Bruttium), and finally becoming the name of the whole Italian peninsula around the third century BC.

[18] Throughout classical antiquity Rhegion remained an important maritime and commercial city as well as a cultural centre, as is demonstrated by the presence of academies of art, philosophy, and science, such as the Pythagorean School, and also by its well-known poet Ibycus, the historian Ippys, the musicologist Glaucus, and the sculptors Pythagoras and Clearchus.

The Legio Campana [de], under the command of Decius Vibellus, was installed as a garrison but subsequently launched a violent coup and seized control of the city.

[17] It was a central pivot for both maritime and mainland traffic, reached by the final part of the Via Popilia, which was built in the 2nd century BC and joined the older Via Appia at Capua, south of Rome.

During this period, constant migrations of Greeks fleeing the Slavic invasion of Peloponnese, further strengthened the Hellenic element of the city.

[17] In 1005, a Christian fleet coming from Pisa sacked the city and massacred all the Saracens to the great jubilation of the local population.

[34] In 1060 the Normans, under Robert Guiscard and Roger I of Sicily, captured Reggio but Greek cultural and religious elements persisted until the 17th century.

[35] In 1282, during the Sicilian Vespers, Reggio rallied in support of Messina and the other oriental Sicily cities because of the shared history, commercial and cultural interests.

The 16th and 17th centuries were an age of decay due to high Spanish taxes, pestilence, the 1562 earthquake, and the Ottoman Turkish invasions suffered by Reggio between 1534 and 1594.

In fact, some 60 years after the devastation caused by the 1783 earthquake, the English traveller and painter Edward Lear remarked "Reggio is indeed one vast garden, and doubtless one of the loveliest spots to be seen on earth.

A half-ruined castle, beautiful in colour and picturesque in form, overlooks all the long city, the wide straits, and snow-topped Mongibello beyond.

"[39] On 21 August 1860, during the Battaglia di Piazza Duomo [it; fr; ru] (Cathedral Square Battle), Giuseppe Garibaldi conquered the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies.

Bruno Antonio Rossi (the mayor of Reggio after the historian Domenico Spanò Bolani, who helped the citizenship during the previous turbulent years) was the first in the kingdom to proclaim the new Garibaldi Dictatorship and the end of the rule of Francis II.

[41][42] During the World War II, due to its strategic military position, it suffered a devastating air raid and was used as the invasion target by the British Eighth Army in 1943, which led to the city's capture.

During 1970–71 the city was the scene of a popular uprising—known as the Moti di Reggio—against the government choice of Catanzaro as capital of the newly instituted Region of Calabria.

[46] The 'Ndrangheta extorts protection money (pizzo) from every shop and viable business in town and has more power than the city council in awarding licences to retailers.

The sitting mayor at the time, Agatino Licandro [it], made a confession reporting "suitcases coming into city hall stuffed with money but going out empty".

The move came after some councillors were suspected of having ties to the powerful crime syndicate, under the 10-year centre-right rule of Giuseppe Scopelliti, mayor from 2002 to 2010.

[48] His successor, the centre-right mayor Demetrio Arena and all 30 city councillors, were sacked to prevent any "mafia contagion" in the local government.

In 1562 one destroyed the natural, medieval port of the city and brought about the submersion of the Calamizzi promontory, known in ancient times as the Pallantiòn, where, we are told, the first Greek settlers, the Calcidesi, had set foot.

The particularly devastating of 1783 and that of 1908, which was the worst natural calamity to take place in Europe in human memory, both profoundly altered the urban aspect of the city, due to the successive re-building which gave the present-day layout of straight, intersecting roads, planned by Giovanbattista Mori in 1784 and by Pietro de Nava [it] in 1911.

But some town-planning policies at the time were decided upon with no respect for the architectural history of Reggio, as is shown by the demolition of the remaining Norman part of the Castle, following the last big earthquake in 1923.

[52] Although Reggio and Calabria in general were less popular destinations than Sicily or Naples for the first Northern European travellers, several famous names such as the Flemish Pieter Bruegel (in c. 1550), the German Johann Hermann von Riedesel [it; de; fr] (in 1767), the Frenchmen Jean Claude Richard de Saint-Non (in 1778) and Stendhal (in 1817), the British travellers Henry Swinburne (in c. 1775), Richard Keppel Craven (in c. 1820), Craufurd Tait Ramage (in 1828), the Strutt family and Elizabeth Byron (in 1840), Edward Lear (in 1847), Norman Douglas (in 1911), D. H. Lawrence (in c. 1920) and Eric Whelpton (in 1950s) and the Belgian Jules Destrée (in 1915 and in 1930) visited Reggio.

[53] With an exceptionally high population density, Reggio Calabria was cited as having the least green space in a study of 386 European cities.

The study further reported "Per capita green space provision varied by two orders of magnitude, from 3 to 4 m2 per person in Cádiz, Fuenlabrada and Almería (Spain) and Reggio di Calabria (Italy) to more than 300 m2 in Liège (Belgium), Oulu (Finland) and Valenciennes (France).

Industry in the city revolves primarily around agriculture and export, fruits, tobacco, briar and the precious essence of the bergamot which is used in perfume production.

The museum (13,400 m2) draws inspiration from the organic form of the starfish, utilizing a radial symmetry to coordinate communication and circulation between different program elements: exhibition spaces, restoration facilities, archive, aquarium and library.

The members of Parliament representing Reggio Calabria are Federica Dieni (M5S) in the Chamber and Marco Siclari (FI) in the Senate.