About this journey

Messina Centrale station, inaugurated on 12 December 1866 as the terminal of the first section of the Messina-Catania-Siracusa line, stands as one of Sicily's oldest railway gateways. The original building was heavily damaged in the 1908 earthquake and fully replaced in 1939 with a structure designed by futurist architect Angiolo Mazzoni.

From Messina, trains do not reach the Italian mainland by rail alone. Rolling stock boards a ferry at Messina Marittima and crosses the Strait of Messina to Villa San Giovanni — a crossing that has linked Sicily to the national rail network since 1 March 1905, when a short connecting railway joined Villa San Giovanni station to the ferry port. The strait is a recognised European bottleneck for bird migration, with over 300 species recorded in the area and a single-spring raptor count of 35,000. Its strong currents and whirlpools were linked in antiquity to the Greek legend of Scylla and Charybdis.

Villa San Giovanni station, opened on 20 May 1884 as part of a 12 km section of the Southern Tyrrhenian railway, functions today as the principal mainland rail gateway to Sicily and a transit point for all rail freight between the island and the rest of Italy. Its position on the Tyrrhenian route, shorter than the alternative Jonica line, established it as the dominant crossing point over its neighbour Reggio Calabria.