One is highly tempted - when dealing with the history of Messina - to let oneself be carried away by the magic of legend and to lose oneself in myth and fable. Besides, few cities are so rich in folk beliefs as the city on the Straits: from Carybdus to Glaucus, from Mata and Grifone to the White Dame, from Colapesce to Morgan le Fay, the origins and very history of Messina are permeated with these extraordinary events. But scientists and archaeologists, less poetic and more historical than the ancient writers, less fanciful and more rational, have reconstructed the "true" story of this extraordinary place, and they tell us that it is not true that Neptune separated Sicily from the mainland with a single trident blow and that Saturn, enamoured of the beauty of this place, founded the ancient city there. If there are few notices referring to the pre - Greek period - on the shores of the Straits Siculo farmers and hunters and Phoenician merchants left traces of their presence - there are more abundant ones about the Hellenic colonisation of the site. It was, besides, precisely here, in the short stretch of Jonian coastline going from the Straits to Syracuse that there began the Greek adventure i Sicily, with the foundation of Zancle, Naxos and Syracuse. Here, those settles coming from Cuma and Chalcis, around 756 B.C. (or 730 or 727 B.C., according to the versions of different historians), founded their town, Zancle, or "sickle". It was possible to reconstruct the planimetry of that ancient settlement - most probably laid out on the south side of the big harbour - on basis of arcaelogical finds: a regular layout with edifices divided from on another by narrow passages, some sacred structures, like that of a shrine from the late eigth century B.C., at the extreme tipe of the tongue of land that closes off the arbour and, also, funereal monuments like the one (in Largo Avignone) in the area of the necropolis itself, in the form of an underground chamber. The vicissitudes of the city - Zangle, Messana, Messina - were always to be closely connected to the economic and strategic importance of the site itself: a place of encounder and clash for so many peoples and for the most diverse interest. Conquered and reconquered by Sicilian Greeks and by Carthaginians, Messana - this was the name given to it by the tyrand of Reggio - was to be the first Roman colony in Sicily and, during the last two centuries before the Christian era - was to reach a position of maior importance, so much so that Cicero defined it "civitas maxima at locupletissima". This splendour was to last at least until the fall the western Roman Empire (476 A.D.), that is to sayd the start of the barbarian invasion, to recover it the Byzantines, becoming a "protometropolis" of Magna Grecia and Sicily. Recovering its role as an important strategic port - of - call in relation whit the east, and getting control of the Calabrian shore, fortified and administered by structures of its own, Messina succeeded, at least until 843 A.D., in holding out against a new invasion, of the Muslims. After a new grave period of decline - the city was to be abandoned by its people and to be re - peopled only in 956, under the Arabs - it was to become Norman in 1061 and to receive form the Normans privilegies that were at the basis of a municipal constitution to last until seventeeth century. Messina then went to the Angevins and became an important military port at time of the Crusades, so that its commercial and cultural strength increased. These were the last centuries of great splendour for the city n the Straits. The wealth, the great development in terms of town planning and monuments, the political importance, were reflected in the major development of culture, and in Messinathere was a flourishing of men of letters and humanists, thinkers and artists. One name stands out among them all, that of Antonello. Then its decline started again, thanks to both man and nature. Rebelling against the Spanish in 1675-78, the people of Messina held of the French, but then came under Spanish dominion once again. The Spanish repealed all the centuries privileges of the city on the Straits, demolished the senatorial palace and built- as a severe warning- the imposing San Ranieri citadel. Then the plague, which in 1743 emptied the city, the 1783 earthquake, the furious bombardments by Frederik II of Bourbon - the "bonb king" - the terrible earthquake of 1908 - sixty thousand victims and the destruction of 90% of the buildings and devastation with the allied bombings of 1943, were to do the rest, largely wiping out the signs of a splendid past. Yet it is misguiding to think of Messina as a completely "new" city, substantially rebuilt after the 1908 earthquake and the bombings of World War II: the same doggerd and victorious resistance of the people of Messina that defeated Charles of Anjou in 1282, also made it possible to overcome the culpable greed and barbaric behaviour of man and also the innocent ferocity of nature. Today Messina is a beatiful and charming city, rich by nature and also thanks to what the people have succeeded in preserving and reconstructing. A visit to Messina takes one day. Artistic heritage Santa Maria d'Alemanna (or degli Alemanni)-The beatiful ruins of this church lie in Via Sant'Elia and Via Santa Maria Alemanna. These ruins are very important, as they are the only vestige of Sicilian Gothic architecture. Built in the first half of the thirteenth century, for the Order of Teutonic Knights, the church was gradually abandoned starting from the end of the fifteenth century and in 1808 it ceased to be used as a church. Although wars and earthquakes preyed on this little Hohenstaufen bijou, in its ruins it still preserves all its characteristics of elegance and refinement. Santa maria Annunziata dei Catalani It is one of the most precious treasures of Messina. Built in the second half of the twelfth century under the Normans, probably on a previous church, it has a simple but elegant thirteenth-century facade, in which there are three portals; it also has a cupola and splendid apses. It is a very elegant example of successful blending of styles - Bizantine, Romanesque, Arab and Norman. The interior has three naves on columns with barrel and cross vaults and the cupola rests on Byzantine pinnacles. In the little square in front of the church there is the bronze statue of John of Austria who in 1571 won the battle of Lepanto, defeating the Ottoman fleet; he is shown in the act of crushing the cut- off head of Al Pasha, the commander of the fleet. Also interesting are the low reliefs in the base, commemorating some moments in the historical event. The Cattedral-The stupendous Norman building was built in 1160 under the reign of Roger II and altered in the fourteenth ad sixteenth centuries. It has a basilica layout divided into three by a double row of columns with three semicircular apses, beside which there soars up the fine campanile. The cathedral, which is one of the oldest churches in all Sicily, is a symbol of the misadventures of the city on the Straits-but also of the desire of the people of Messina never to surrender to the inevitable. In the thirteenth century it suffered a terrible fire, and in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries earthquakes, was almost entirely destroyed by the 1908 earthquake and, once reconstructed , badly damaged by American bombs in 1943. Today, in its splendid facade, it conserves three magnificent portals from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the main one of which, completed by Pietro di Bonato in 1468, was originally started by Baboccio da Piperno, the fourteent-century artist who did that statue of the Madonna originally placed in the lunette and now kept at the local museum. Some windows and the fine rosette have also been recovered and restored. Inside, where there is a fine painted wooden ceiling, of major interest are the numerous sepulchral monuments, among which there stands out that of Cardinal Guidotto de Tabiatis, a fourteenth-century work by Goro di Gregorio; twelve altars dating from the sixteenth century; a St. John, probably by Antonello Gagini; and a relief of St. Jerome, from the fifteenth century. There is a very fine treasure,with refined gold, silver and woven objects, done by local craftsmen known all over Europe. Adjacent to the church is the fine campanile, several times reconstructed, in which there is the biggest astronomic clock in the world, made n 1933 in Strasbourg: made up of numerous animated dials showing hours, days, months, planets and religious feasts,at midday it puts on a true music and animation spectacle lasting a quarter of an hour: a spectacle not to be missed, just as one must not miss the climb up the campanile itself (height 65 metres), which is possible from 9 am to 1 pm. Orion's Fountain- A sixteenth- century monumental work by Montorsoli, showing Orion, one of the mythical founders of the city. Neptune's Fountain- Also done by Montorsoli, in 1557, it is in Piazza Unità d'Italia. Several times altered, the fountain shows Neptune placating the waters of the Straits.