DPCM days 8 and 9.

HQ of Nacho Industries Inc. will be in Messina for the next 48h.

Smallish terrace but high ceilings @PaulSkallas.

1/n

When Goethe visited it in 1787, the city had been devastated by an earthquake shortly after.

There were major earthquakes also in 1894 and in 1908 (the later finding 90% of the city in ruins and 60k dead people).

2/n https://twitter.com/NachoOliveras/status/1319714208582348811?s=19

As a result, the city feels a bit "modern" by Sicilian standards.

Shots after a first round of flaneuring.

3/n

Here my best shot at the straits.

At the end of the picture, you see Villa San Giovanni in Calabria.

Italians don't want Sicilians in search of better opportunities flocking North in large numbers, so they never build them a bridge in spite of the strait being 3km narrow.

4/n

(That was, obviously, a joke)

Not that there is no bridge, but the narrative fallacy.

5/n

Vittorio Emanuele gallery in Piazza Antonino.

Certainly business wise not peak season.

6/n – bei Galleria Vittorio Emanuele

These mafiosi arrested today in Messina would made it into the cast of my movie...

7/n

This operation ‘Cesare’ has a lot of details. The main man busted was Pippo Irrera, defined as a “maggiorente” (influential person) of the Gatto clan in Giostra.

His house was like a bunker, full of CCTV. His phone was tapped, he watched the show Camorra, and he loves wine.

8/n

I tried an inferior form of "Breakfastu Sicilianu" today.
A granita in front of Messina's Cathedral.

This might be borderline legal. In Palermo a fellow was fined to take off his mask to take a smoke...

There is a funeral. A Maseratti rode for the dead. Many policemen too.

9/n

The cream on the granita was ok. The policemen did not bother me, they noticed me (stares). Went to the funeral, one of the priests seemed to come to give me communion, but finally didn't.

When I will be gone you can take cues from this dude for my funeral @Marina_Oliva20.

10/n

Bothering a guy alone in a bench was beneath the dignity of those carabinieri. Or it might be legal.
Anyway, the psychophysics of my breakfast were not as good as having a table and proper cutlery, @rorysutherland.

Tramps might be missing something.

11/n https://twitter.com/NachoOliveras/status/1321716959503855616?s=20

Church of Saint Mary of the Announcement 'dei Catalani'.

This "Catalans" church is very, very significant in that it is the only one having make it with no significant damage over the past 300 years in this city shaken regularly by quakes.

12/n

Awesome weather.

Took a walk to one of the landmarks in this city, the Neptune fountain that oversees the straits.

Nearby, a small monument that goes mostly unnoticed to the Greeks that perished in the 1908 earthquake.

13/n

Walking towards this small restaurant run by a mother and her daughter.

Mother is extremely welcoming as the daughter was conceived in Barcelona, where her grandpa was having an eyesight operation at Clínica Barraquer.

I didn't say Barraquer was friends of my grandpa...

14/n

I am not a natural "bragger".

Some people have told me that I come across as such thing here, hope they are wrong.

15/n https://twitter.com/NachoOliveras/status/1152704561896984577?s=20

Orechiette alle rape e le vongole.

Trying to beat the bad psychophysics from a balcony.

Managed only partly.

16/n – bei Re Vittorio De LuxeAccomodations

Autumn in Messina.

I am more than 300 km far from Trapani.

That becomes visible in sunset happening here slightly before than there.

17/n

Unwrapping an espresso while you are taking off your face mask = horrible psychophysics.

I think I am done with coffee after breakfast.

18/n

More flaneuring.

Messina is hilly.

It seems the best view of the straits is from Reggio di Calabria, but from the top of the hill coming from Palermo on the E90 you also get spectacular views.

19/n

Messina in Western European history: Sicily was the first area in the Catholic Western Europe to be reached by the bubonic plague pandemic known as the Black Death, which reached the region by a Genoese ship from the Crimea which landed here in Messina in October 1347.

20/n

From Rosario Gregorio: “After the Genoese came ashore, the inhabitants of Messina started to develop abscesses, coff and die. The Genoese were imediately bannised from the city, but the illness spread with such speed that the city experienced a collapse of social order.”.

21/n

“Messina was pointed out as a city being condemned by God for its sins (...). During November, refugees desperately fled in all directions, dying on the roads and spreading the plague all over the island, including Catania, which became the second plague center of Sicily.”.

22/n

Rosario Gregorio wrote his ‘Historia Sicula’ more than 4 centuries after the facts, and with a pseudonym. He was a good writer, but there are reasons to be skeptical.

But that the 1908 earthquake (~7.1 magnitude) is the worst ever recorded in Europe (80k dead) is certain.

23/n