Strait of Messina Bridge

The Strait of Messina Bridge is a proposed suspension bridge across the Strait of Messina, connecting Torre Faro on the Italian island of Sicily with Villa San Giovanni in Calabria on the Italian mainland. If built, it would be the longest suspension bridge in the world and part of the Berlin–Palermo railway axis of the Trans-European Transport Networks.
While a bridge across the Strait of Messina had been proposed since ancient times, the first detailed plan was made in the 1990s, for a suspension bridge. The project was cancelled in 2006 under Prime Minister Romano Prodi, revived in 2009 under Silvio Berlusconi, and cancelled again in 2013 under Mario Monti. It was resurrected again in 2023 under Giorgia Meloni and received final government approval in August 2025. However, in October, Italy's Court of Audit rejected the proposal.
The proposal has drawn concerns connected with earthquakes, strong currents in the strait, disruption of bird migration routes, and a possibility of infiltration into the bridge's construction by the mafia groups Cosa Nostra and 'Ndrangheta.

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, between Capo d'Alì in Sicily and Punta Pellaro in Calabria, to a minimum of approximately between Capo Peloro in Sicily and Torre Cavallo in Calabria. A similar distance separates Pezzo and Ganzirri. At that point, the strait is only deep, while in other places, it can reach 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, crossing the strait to Punta Pezzo and resurfacing at Torre Cavallo.
In 1909, a geological study of the strait was published. 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 towers sunk into the seafloor. The proposed span would have represented a world record, eclipsing the then-longest centre span of the Golden Gate Bridge and longer than the Mackinac Bridge, then in planning, with a total length of. The proposed structure was to clear the sea by for navigation and have two decks—a lower deck carrying two rail lines, and above, a road deck wide. The main cables were designed with a diameter of. 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.
First Berlusconi government

The 2006 plan called for a single-span suspension bridge with a central span of. 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.
Plans called for four traffic lanes, two railway tracks, and two pedestrian lanes. In order to provide a minimum vertical clearance for navigation of, the two towers were to be high. This would have been taller than the Millau Viaduct in France. The bridge's suspension system would have relied on two pairs of steel cables, each with a diameter of and a total length, between the anchor blocks, of.
The design included of road links and of railway links to the bridge. On the mainland, the bridge was to connect to the new stretch of the Salerno-Reggio Calabria motorway and to the planned Naples-Reggio Calabria high-speed rail line; on the Sicilian side, to the Messina-Catania and Messina-Palermo motorways as well as the new Messina railway station.
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 or simply Città dello Stretto. 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, the Italian companies Società Italiana per Condotte D'Acqua S.p.A. and Cooperativa Muratori & Cementisti-C.M.C. of Ravenna, Japan's IHI Corporation, and Consorzio Stabile A.C.I. S.c.p.a.
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.
File:Akashi Bridge 04.jpeg|thumb|The Akashi Kaikyo Bridge, built in 1998 in Japan by IHI Corporation, one of the companies in charge of constructing the Messina Bridge.
File:Öresund bridge.JPG|thumb|The Øresund Bridge, built in 1999 by COWI A/S, one of the companies that was supposed to be involved in constructing the Messina Bridge.

Function

Companies

Role

General contractor

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, 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.
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.