Reggio Calabria historical timeline

Reggio is among the oldest cities in Italy and almost none of that is visible, for one reason.

Rhegion

Founded by Greeks from Chalcis around 730 BC, Rhegion became one of the principal cities of Magna Graecia, controlling the strait. It was a place of some intellectual weight — the lawgiver Charondas and the poet Ibycus are associated with it — and it stayed Greek-speaking for many centuries under Rome and Byzantium.

Between empires

Its position made it a target. Reggio was sacked by Dionysius of Syracuse, held by Byzantium, raided by Arabs, taken by Normans, and fought over repeatedly thereafter, because whoever held the strait controlled passage between the two halves of the Mediterranean.

28 December 1908

At twenty past five in the morning an earthquake of about magnitude seven struck the strait, followed within minutes by a tsunami. Messina and Reggio were both destroyed. Estimates of the dead across the strait run from around 75,000 to over 100,000; it remains the deadliest earthquake in European recorded history.

Reggio was rebuilt from almost nothing, to a regular grid with height limits and anti-seismic construction. That is why a city founded before Rome looks a century old.

After the rebuilding

The reconstruction took decades and the city grew fast afterwards, absorbing people from an emptying interior. Reggio was also briefly at the centre of national politics in 1970, when losing the regional capital to Catanzaro set off months of rioting in the city -- an episode that still shapes local feeling about how Calabria is governed.

1972

A diver off Riace, up the Ionian coast, found two bronze statues in eight metres of water. Their restoration and display in Reggio gave the city the object it is now known for.