Strait of Messina Bridge

Geography

The Strait of Messina is a funnel-shaped arm of sea that connects the Ionian Sea in the south to the Tyrrhenian Sea to the north. The width of the strait varies from a maximum of approximately 16 km, between Capo d'Alì in Sicily and Punta Pellaro in Calabria, to a minimum of approximately 3 km between Capo Peloro in Sicily and Torre Cavallo in Calabria. A similar distance separates Pezzo and Ganzirri. At that point, the strait is only 72 m deep, while in other places, it can reach 200 m deep. In addition to strong tidal currents, the region's significant seismic activity will pose a challenge to the bridge's construction.

History

The idea of a bridge crossing the strait is an old one. The Romans considered building a bridge joining Calabria and Sicily, which was to be constructed from boats and barrels. Pliny the Elder, a philosopher and Roman military leader born in AD 23, wrote of a plan to bridge the strait with a series of connecting boats. The idea was abandoned, as it was clear that more traffic plied the strait in a north-south rather than east-west direction, so any structure on water could not be permanent.

Charlemagne considered joining the two sides with a series of bridges. This idea was revived by the Norman adventurer Robert Guiscard in the 11th century and by Roger II of Sicily in the 12th. In 1876, the politician Giuseppe Zanardelli was convinced that the strait could be linked by either a bridge or a tunnel. In 1866, the public works minister, Stefano Jacini, turned to Alfredo Cottrau, an internationally renowned engineer, to design a planned bridge between Calabria and Sicily.

In 1870, Navone proposed building a tunnel, based on Napoleon's failed 1802 proposal of a Channel Tunnel running below the English Channel. It was to start at Contesse and pass below Messina and Ganzirri at a depth of 150 m, crossing the strait to Punta Pezzo and resurfacing at Torre Cavallo.

In 1909, a geological study of the strait was published (historical Arch. Sicilian year XXXIV f.1,2). In 1921, a study of an undersea tunnel was released to the Geographic Conference of Florence. A group of railway civil engineers studied the possibility of a suspension bridge, but nothing came of it.

In 1953, the idea was revived by the American civil engineer David B. Steinman, with a plan to build a bridge that crossed the strait using two 220 m towers sunk 120 m into the seafloor. The proposed 1524 m span would have represented a world record, eclipsing the then-longest 1275 m centre span of the Golden Gate Bridge and longer than the 2256 m Mackinac Bridge, then in planning, with a total length of 2988 m. The proposed structure was to clear the sea by 50 m for navigation and have two decks—a lower deck carrying two rail lines, and 7 m above, a road deck 30 m wide. The main cables were designed with a diameter of 1 m. Construction of the bridge would have required 12,000 workers and cost hundreds of billions of lire.

Modern attempts to build the bridge

Early planning stages

• In the 1960s, a wide variety of proposals were advanced, including everything from submerged tubes to floating struts, pontoons, and a revolving central section of the bridge. None turned out to be realistic.
• In 1969 an international design competition was arranged.
• In the 1970s, feasibility studies were undertaken by the state railways, leading to the creation of a private company with responsibility for planning the strait's crossing.
• In the 1980s, the Messina Strait Company was set up with support from the state railways, the regions, and the Istituto per la Ricostruzione Industriale. It concluded that it would be feasible to build a suspension bridge.
• Detailed plans followed in the 1990s, with final approval from the High Council of Public Works (Consiglio Superiore dei Lavori Pubblici).

First Berlusconi government

The 2006 plan called for a single-span suspension bridge with a central span of 3300 m. This would have made the span more than 60% longer than the 1915 Çanakkale Bridge in Turkey—currently the longest suspension bridge in the world, at 2023 m.

Plans called for four traffic lanes (two driving lanes and one emergency lane in each direction), two railway tracks, and two pedestrian lanes. In order to provide a minimum vertical clearance for navigation of 65 m, the two towers were to be 382.6 m high. This would have been taller than the Millau Viaduct in France (then the world's tallest bridge, at 341 m). The bridge's suspension system would have relied on two pairs of steel cables, each with a diameter of 1.24 m and a total length, between the anchor blocks, of 5300 m.

The design included 20.3 km of road links and 19.8 km of railway links to the bridge. On the mainland, the bridge was to connect to the new stretch of the Salerno-Reggio Calabria motorway (A3) and to the planned Naples-Reggio Calabria high-speed rail line; on the Sicilian side, to the Messina-Catania (A18) and Messina-Palermo (A20) motorways as well as the new Messina railway station (to be built by Rete Ferroviaria Italiana).

The bridge was planned to connect Reggio Calabria to Messina, the two cities that face each other on either side of the strait, in order to form a single metropolitan area. This ambitious urban project was called Area Metropolitana integrata dello Stretto ("integrated metropolitan area of the strait") or simply Città dello Stretto ("city of the strait"). Among the controversies surrounding the bridge's construction was strong, relentless opposition from various Sicilian nationalist groups, which explicitly objected to the formation of such a metropolitan area.

Among the engineers who participated in the project was Giorgio Diana, who mainly dealt with the aeroelastic aspect.

Contracting parties

A construction consortium, led by Impregilo, was selected in 2005, with work set to begin in the second half of 2006. The bridge was designed by Danish architects at Dissing+Weitling in close collaboration with the Danish engineering firm COWI. In March 2006, Impregilo and Stretto di Messina signed a contract assigning final project planning to a general contractor. Impregilo S.p.A., the lead partner, had a 45% share. Other participants were Spain's Sacyr (18.70%), the Italian companies Società Italiana per Condotte D'Acqua S.p.A. (15%) and Cooperativa Muratori & Cementisti-C.M.C. of Ravenna (13%), Japan's IHI Corporation (6.30%), and Consorzio Stabile A.C.I. S.c.p.a (2%).

The general contractor would also be assisted by the Danish and Canadian companies COWI A/S, Sund & Baelt A/S, and Buckland & Taylor Ltd., who would handle project engineering. Completion was planned to take six years, at an estimated cost of €3.9 billion.

On 12 October 2006, the Italian Parliament voted 272 to 232 in favour of abandoning the plan due to the bridge's "doubtful usefulness and viability" and the inability of the already burdened Italian treasury to bear its share of the cost. Transport minister Alessandro Bianchi stressed that the road and rail links leading to the location of the proposed bridge are not capable of supporting enough traffic to make its construction economically feasible. Other reasons for abandoning the plan were earthquake risk and fears that the bridge would enrich the networks of organized crime in Italy, such as Cosa Nostra and 'Ndrangheta.

Second Berlusconi government

In April 2008, Silvio Berlusconi was re-elected Prime Minister of Italy and vowed to restart the project to build the bridge. The following month, Altero Matteoli, Italy's minister of infrastructure and transport, confirmed the government's intent to restart work on the bridge in a letter to Pietro Ciucci, the president of Società Stretto di Messina.

In March 2009, as part of a massive new public works programme, Berlusconi's government announced that plans to construct the Messina bridge had been revived, pledging €1.3 billion as a contribution to its estimated cost of €6.1 billion. Berlusconi claimed that work would be completed by 2016. Until 2006, when the project was halted, the work had been assigned to a consortium of Impregilo (now called Webuild), Condotte d'Acqua, Cooperativa Muratori & Cementisti, and Consorzio Stabile A.C.I., alongside Spain's Sacyr and Japan's IHI Corporation.

In December 2009, preparatory work began, with the diversion of the Tyrrhenian railway at Cannitello on the Italian mainland side of the strait.

In February 2013, the project was shut down by Prime Minister Mario Monti, for lack of funds.

Renzi government

In September 2016, the project was reconsidered by the government of Matteo Renzi.

Conte government

In June 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte brought up the topic of the bridge, declaring that the government would evaluate the resumption of work without prejudice.

In April 2021, the CEO of Webuild, Pietro Salini, in a joint press conference with the President of the Sicilian Region, Nello Musumeci, announced that he was ready to build the Strait of Messina Bridge, starting immediately with the work and on the basis of the executive project and construction site approved definitively in 2013. He declared that he already had the four-billion-euro coverage necessary for the construction and that he could obtain the other two necessary for the infrastructures connected to it from private financing.

Meloni government

On 16 March 2023, the Italian government, under Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, with Matteo Salvini as Minister of Infrastructure and Transport, approved a decree to proceed with the construction of the bridge by remodeling the existing project.

On 19 March, WeBuild's Pietro Salini said work on the bridge should begin by 2024, with the project scheduled for completion in 2032.

On 31 March, the Italian president, Sergio Mattarella, approved the Decreto Ponte ("bridge decree").

In April 2025, Salvini announced that construction of the bridge would start in mid-2025 and would comply with all environmental standards.

In August 2025, the Meloni government gave final approval to the project, allowing construction on the bridge to commence. It indicated that it would consider the bridge as a defence-related expense to count towards a NATO spending target. In September, the United States government said it disapproved of the strategy, calling it "creative accounting". On 30 October, Italy's Court of Audit rejected the proposal to build the bridge.

Challenges and criticisms

The bridge has been regarded as highly controversial due to the impact of earthquakes, strong currents in the strait, concerns about disruption of bird migration routes, and possible infiltration of the mafia groups Cosa Nostra and 'Ndrangheta into construction projects.

Seismic activity and strong winds have been cited as the largest structural issues the bridge faces. The span must withstand earthquakes with a maximum intensity of 7.8 Mw, greater than the 1908 Messina earthquake.

In August 2025, thousands of people in Messina protested against the plan to build the bridge.

References

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