The idea of having a bridge connecting Sicily to mainland Italy has been around for a while. And we really do mean a while. Apparently the Romans were the first to pitch the idea thousands of years ago, suggesting that a bridge of boats and barrels could be a way of linking Italy’s ‘foot’ to its ‘ball’.
Over the next several thousand years, a bridge between Italy and Sicily has been suggested many more times. It nearly came to fruition as recently as 2009 and while that attempt was called off in 2013, now, excitingly, it looks like work is set to start again on the Strait of Messina bridge – and it could be as early as this year.
Mainland Italy and Sicily are separated by the Strait of Messina, which is a body of water that links the Ionian sea in the south with the Tyrrhenian Sea in the north. At its narrowest point the strait is 3.1 kilometres (1.9 miles) wide, with the port city of Messina on the Sicilian side and the Calabrian city of Villa San Giovanni on the mainland.
The Italian government approved a decree to proceed with the construction of the bridge in 2023, and back in October, the bridge’s construction company Società Stretto di Messina and the Climate, Infrastructure and Environment Executive Agency of the European Commission, signed a new funding proposal that’ll see the EU cover 50 percent of the executive design costs of the rail infrastructure (around €25 million).
Now, a source has confirmed that the Italian government will give the final green light in a planning committee meeting on August 7, according to Reuters. Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has set aside €13.5 billion for the project.
Once complete, the Strait of Messina Bridge will be the longest suspension bridge in the world at 3,600 metres long. What’s more, the design means theoretically it could withstand a 7.5 magnitude earthquake and 186 mph winds.
All sounds pretty exciting, right? But while we’re looking forward to Sicily becoming a whole lot more accessible (especially by train), the bridge is hardly gonna be built overnight. Officials have suggested it won’t be completed until 2032.
Until then, you’ll have to get between the two sides via the old-fashioned ways. Plane and ferry are the most common ways to traverse the Strait of Messina, though you can also get a train from Sicily direct to Rome and Naples that boards its own ferry.
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