Reggio Calabria, also known as Reggio di Calabria and often simply as Reggio, is the largest city in Calabria as well as the seat of the Metropolitan City of Reggio Calabria. As of 2026, with a population of 167,925, it is the 22nd most populous city in Italy, after Reggio Emilia. Reggio Calabria is located near the center of the Mediterranean and is known for its climate, and ethnic and cultural diversity. It is the third economic centre of mainland Southern Italy. About 511,935 people live in its metropolitan area.
Reggio is located on the "toe" of the Italian Peninsula and is separated from the island of Sicily by the Strait of Messina. It is situated on the slopes of the Aspromonte, a long, craggy mountain range that runs up through the centre of the region.
As a major functional pole in the region, it has strong historical, cultural and economic ties with the city of Messina, which lies across the strait in Sicily, forming a metro city of less than 1 million people.
Reggio is the oldest city in the region, and during ancient times, it was an important and flourishing colony of Magna Graecia. Reggio has a modern urban system, set up after the catastrophic earthquake of 1908, which destroyed most of the city. Before that seismic event, the region had been subject to several other previous earthquakes. The seismicity is caused by Reggio being on the Eurasian Plate near the faultline where it meets the African Plate that runs through the strait, dividing the two European regions of Calabria and Sicily into two different tectonic regions.
It is a major economic centre for regional services and transport on the southern shores of the Mediterranean. Reggio, with Naples and Taranto, is home to one of the most important archaeological museums, the National Archaeological Museum of Magna Græcia, dedicated to Ancient Greece (which houses the Bronzes of Riace, rare example of Greek bronze sculpture, which became one of the symbols of the city). Reggio is the seat, since 1907, of the Archeological Superintendence of Bruttium and Lucania. The city is home to football club Reggina, which previously played in the Italian top flight.
The city centre, consisting primarily of Liberty buildings, has a linear development along the coast with parallel streets, and the promenade is dotted with rare magnolias and exotic palms. Reggio has several commonly used nicknames: The "City of Bronzes", after the Bronzes of Riace that are testimonials of its Greek origins; the "City of bergamot", which is exclusively cultivated in the region; and the "City of Fatamorgana", an optical phenomenon visible in Italy only from the Reggio seaside.
Etymology During its 3,500-year history Reggio has often been renamed. Each name corresponds with the city's major historical phases:
(Greek for 'red'), allegedly the name of the pre-Greek settlement. (), the Greek city from the 8th to the 3rd centuries BC. (after Apollo), a short period under Dionysius II of Syracuse, in the 4th century BC. or , its first Latin name, during the 3rd and 2nd centuries BC. (), during the Roman Imperial period. , Arabic name under the short domination by Emirate of Sicily, between 10th and 11th centuries. , under the Normans, between the 11th and 12th centuries. , Catalan name under the Crown of Aragon, in the late 13th century. or , usual Italian name in the Middle and Modern age. , post Italian Unification (to be distinguished from or – located in northern Italy – which was renamed ).
The toponym of the city might derive from an Italic word (meaning 'king', cognate with Latin ). Ancient Greek and Roman etymologists derived it from the Greek (, 'break'), referring to a mythic earthquake in which Sicily was broken off from the Italian mainland.Alessandro Gioffrè d'Ambra and others Reggio Centro del Mediterraneo - un excursus storico di 3500 anni, Club UNESCO 'Re Italo', Provincia di Reggio, Tipografia Enotria, Reggio di Calabria, May 2014
History
Ancient times The history of the area before the arrival of the Greeks in the eighth century BC is not reliably known. Mythical accounts record a series of different peoples in the region, including the Osci (sometimes referred to as Opici), Trojans, Oenotrians, Ligures, Ausones, Mamertines, Taureani, Sicels, Morgetes and Itali.Domenico Spanò Bolani, Storia di Reggio – da' tempi primitivi sino all'anno 1797 • Stamperia e Cartiere del Fibreno, Naples, 1857 They also claim that the land around Reggio was first known as Saturnia, or Neptunia. The term 'Italia' initially referred to the area around Reggio itself, before expanding to cover present-day southern Calabria (later known as Bruttium), and finally becoming the name of the whole Italian peninsula around the third century BC. Allegedly, the name derives from king Italus, an Oenotrian king of the region.Lessico Universale Italiano XI, "Italo", Enciclopedia Italiana Treccani, Roma, 1973.
After Cumae, Reggio was one of the first Greek colonies in southern Italy. The colony was settled by the inhabitants of Chalcis in 730 or 743 BC on the site of the older settlement, Erythra (), meaning 'red'. The legendary founder of the city was King Iocastus, son of Aeolus, who was later said to be buried on the Punta Calamizzi promontory (called "Pallantion") and appeared on the city's coinage. The colony retained the name of "Rhegion" (). Pseudo-Scylax also writes that it was a Greek city.
Rhegion was one of the most important cities in Magna Graecia, reaching great economic and political power during the 5th and 6th centuries BC under Anaxilas, who reigned as tyrant from 494 to 476 BC. Anaxilas conquered Zancle (modern Messina), extending Rhegian control over both shores of the Straits of Messina. He attempted to conquer Locri as well in 477 BC but was rebuffed. When he died in 476 BC, his two sons were too young to rule, so power was held by their regent Micythus. Under his rule, Rhegion founded a colony, Pyxous (modern Policastro Bussentino) in Campania in 471 BC.Herodotus 7.170; Diodorus Siculus 11.52, 11.59.14. Hieron I of Syracuse orchestrated Micythus' removal from power in 467 BC,Diodorus Siculus 11.66.1-3 after which Anaxilas' sons ruled on their own until they were deposed in 461 BC.Diodorus Siculus 11.76.5; Justin 4.3.1-3 During the Peloponnesian War, Rhegion allied with Athens. An Athenian inscription (IG I3 53) reports a renewal of this alliance in 433 BC.Translation and commentary on Attic Inscriptions Online. The Athenians supported Rhegion in a war with Locri during the First Sicilian Expedition (427–425 BC).Thucydides 4.1.1-3 However, when the Athenians launched the much larger Sicilian Expedition of 415–413 BC, Rhegion offered them only limited assistance.
During the Third Sicilian War, Rhegion became hostile to Dionysius I of Syracuse. He attacked the city for the first time in 396 BC, but he was rebuffed. Dionysius destroyed the Rhegian navy in 389 BC, besieged the city again in 388 BC and, when it finally fell in 387 BC, destroyed it.Polybius 1.6.1, Diodorus Siculus 14.56.1-2, 108-111, 114-117 His son, Dionysius II refounded the city as 'Phoebeia' in the 360s BC. When he was expelled from Syracuse in 356 BC, he retained control of Phoebeia, but it was captured by Syracusan forces led by Leptines and Callippus in 351 BC.Diodorus Siculus 16.45.9 Rhegion then reverted to its original name.
Throughout classical antiquity Rhegion remained an important maritime and commercial city as well as a cultural centre, as is demonstrated by the presence of academies of art, philosophy, and science, such as the Pythagorean School, and also by its well-known poet Ibycus, the historian Ippys, the musicologist Glaucus, and the sculptors Pythagoras and Clearchus.
Rhegion made an alliance with the Roman Republic in 282 BC, shortly before the Pyrrhic War. The , under the command of Decius Vibellus, was installed as a garrison but subsequently launched a violent coup and seized control of the city.Dionysius of Halicarnassus 20.4. cf. Polybius 1.7.6-7, Diodorus Siculus 22.1.2-3 Roman forces deposed Decius and restored the city's independence in 271 BC. Thereafter, Rhegium was an important ally of Rome, with the status of and socia navalis (naval ally). It retained its Greek customs and language, as well as its mint. It was a central pivot for both maritime and mainland traffic, reached by the final part of the Via Popilia, which was built in the 2nd century BC and joined the older Via Appia at Capua, south of Rome. Close to Rhegion, on the Straits of Messina, was the busy port of Columna Rhegina. Under the Emperor Augustus, the city was renamed Rhegium Juli in honour of the emperor's adoptive father Julius Caesar and was the seat of the (governor) of "Regio III Lucania et Bruttii" (the southernmost of the eleven regiones into which Italy was divided). In AD 61 the apostle St. Paul passed through Rhegium on his final voyage towards Rome,Acts 28.13 converting the first local Christians and, according to tradition, laying the foundations of the Christianization of Bruttium.
Rhegium boasted in imperial times nine thermal baths,De Gregorio, Lucia. "Le Terme Romane di Reggio Calabria. La ricerca archeologica tra il 1881 e il 1924", Calabria Sconosciuta n. 139/140– Azienda Grafica Biroccio, Reggio di Calabria (July–December 2013). one of which is still visible today on the sea-front. Due to its seismic activity, the area was often damaged by earthquakes, such as in 91 BC, AD 17, 305 and 374.AAVV "Reggio di Calabria" in "L'Italia - Basilicata e Calabria", Touring Club Italiano, La Repubblica, Pioltello, 2005
Middle Ages
Numerous occupying armies came to Reggio during the early Middle Ages due to the city's strategic importance.
Invasions by the Vandals, the Lombards and the Goths occurred in the 5th–6th centuries. Then, under Byzantine rule, it became a metropolis of the Byzantine possessions in Italy and was also the capital of the Duchy of Calabria several times between 536 and 1060 AD. Following wars between the Lombards and Byzantines in the 6th century, Bruttium was renamed Calabria.
As a Byzantine centre of culture, certain monks there undertook scribal work, carrying out the transcription of ancient classical works. Until the 15th century, Reggio was one of the most important Greek-rite Bishoprics in Italy—even today Greek words are used and are recognisable in local speech and Byzantine terms can be found in local liturgy, in religious icons and even in local recipes. During this period, constant migrations of Greeks fleeing the Slavic invasion of Peloponnese, further strengthened the Hellenic element of the city. During this period, the Byzantines decided to move the cultivation of mulberry trees and the breeding of silkworms from Syria (constantly under threat) to Reggio, which would later prove important for the economy of Reggio and for the entire empire.
The Arabs occupied Reggio in 918 and held some of its inhabitants to ransom or kept them prisoners as slaves.Western Europe on the Eve of the Crusades, Sidney Painter, A History of the Crusades, Vol. I, ed. Kenneth M. Setton and Marshall W. Baldwin, (University of Wisconsin Press, 1969), p. 50. For brief periods in the 10th–11th centuries the city was ruled by the Arabs and, renamed (or sometimes ), became part of the Emirate of Sicily. During the period of Arab rule various beneficial ideas were introduced into Calabria, such as citrus fruit trees, and several ways of cooking local vegetables such as aubergines. The Arabs introduced water ices and ice cream and also greatly improved agricultural and hydraulic techniques for irrigation.