About this journey

The journey departs from Palermo Centrale, a terminal station with 10 platforms opened on 7 June 1886, its original iron-and-glass roof long since replaced by a reinforced concrete structure after 1941. Both Palermo Centrale and Messina Centrale are owned by Ferrovie dello Stato, Italy's national rail company, and the route between them — operated here by the ETR 104 — is one of Sicily's principal rail connections across the island.

At the eastern end of the line, Messina Centrale carries its own layered history. First inaugurated on 12 December 1866 as the terminus of the railway to Taormina, it was heavily damaged in the 1908 earthquake before being fully rebuilt in 1939 to designs by futurist architect Angiolo Mazzoni. The station sits almost contiguous with Messina Marittima, the port station where trains have long been loaded onto ferry ships for the crossing of the Strait of Messina to Villa San Giovanni on the mainland. Since 1 May 2019, Blu Jet has also carried passengers across the strait by high-speed vessel. Both stations are part of the projected Berlin–Palermo railway axis, placing this cross-island journey within a much larger European corridor.