Senate of Messina

Messina, already in prehistoric times, was on a route of high importance for Mediterranean traffic and, with the advent of the Romans, it became the main port of Sicily.

In this period the city became the seat of the Consulate of the Sea, a tribunal made up of consuls freely elected by merchants and navigiorum primates which issued rules and ordinances for the regulation of relations between merchants, exempted the people of Messina from taxes, customs and other payments by sea and by land and established other commercial advantages which further enhanced traffic.

[7] In 1507, crowded with merchants from all over the world, to negotiate the prices of goods in precarious and unsuitable places, such as the Palazzo della Dogana, the city sent an embassy to Spain to ask Ferdinand II of Aragon for a fixed headquarters to conduct these dealings.

The history of Messina sees it in 1650 among the ten largest and most important cities in all of Europe, with a primary cultural role for all of the West, as well as the main strategic military and commercial base for the whole Mediterranean.

During the epidemic, the sailors of the city of Palmi, with an impulse of human solidarity, helped the inhabitants of Messina by hosting them, assisting them and sending them food.

During their continuous interventions they did not care about the danger of being able to contract the infection, nor of being imprisoned if they were caught crossing the sanitary cordon that the authorities had created to prevent the spread of the disease.

As soon as the terrible disease subsided, the Senate of Messina wanted to donate to the city of Palmi one of the Hair of the Madonna that the ambassadors had brought from Jerusalem, as a tangible sign of gratitude for the help given by the Palmese sailors.

In 1668, the Senate of Messina gave the Florentine goldsmith Innocenzo Mangani the task of manufacturing the Golden Manta of the Madonna, kept in the Cathedral, used only on great celebrations.