Villa San Giovanni () is a port city and a municipality in the Metropolitan City of Reggio Calabria of Calabria, Italy. In 2025 its population was 12,676 with a decrease of 2.5% until 2016 and in 2020 an increase of 3.7%. It is an important terminal for access to Sicily and is also known for being the location of several police films.
Geography It is situated on the coast of the Strait of Messina, directly across from the city of Messina on the other side of the narrow strait. Its port serves as the primary ferry terminal for Sicily. The municipality of Villa is home to Punta Pezzo, which marks the closest point between the Calabrian shore and the Sicilian side. This geographical advantage has made the city an ideal location for crossing the strait. Notably, Punta Pezzo features a prominent lighthouse. The city encompasses several neighborhoods, including Acciarello, Cannitello, Pezzo, and Piale.
History
The last decades of the sixteenth century saw the rise in the small coastal villages, such as Cannitello and Pezzo, inhabited mostly by sailors and fishermen. Further inland, at the current center of the Villa, there was a village called Fossa. Later came Piale and Acciarello. The coastal repopulation accelerated the eighteenth century progressive decline of Fiumara di Muro, until the administrative reform implemented in 1806 by Giuseppe Bonaparte definitively abolished the feudal system and the Lordship of Fiumara disappeared. On 8 January 1676 he fought a naval battle between the Dutch and the French fleet in the waters of the Strait in front of Punta Pezzo, with a victorious outcome for the French. The cannons found at Pezzo in 1902 probably date back to this battle.
The plague of 1743 and the fire pit In 1743, there was an unfortunate incident involving the small village of Fossa. In March of that year, a Genoese ship loaded with wheat from Patras had brought the plague to Messina (that was the last major outbreak of plague in Western Europe). The Health Council of the city of Reggio Calabria had ordered all boats not to approach the port of Messina and instituted guard duty on the coast to enforce the ordinance. The Health Council of Messina denied the epidemic, so as not to interrupt the trade with the continent; however once the alarming news coming from the Sicilian town was heard, the spokespersons were not considered trustworthy and four citizens, two noble and two civilians, provided surveillance for Fossa, which then numbered no more than seventy people and Pezzo with perhaps two hundred and Acciarello, a village recently formed as a result of the exodus of the Azzarello family of Messina just because of the plague.
Throughout the month of April, confusing news of the Messina situation arrived in Naples, so the government did not take the necessary steps, while the epidemic grew enormously in that city. In the situation of isolation in which Messina found itself, many sailors and masters began to smuggle in food and basic necessities from the Calabrian side of the Strait and the resorts of Ganzirri and Torre Faro in Messina. This led to the arrival on the continent of infected products. Among these smugglers were the brothers Peter and Paul Lombardo di Fossa, originating from Fiumara. It is said that on the night of 10 June, the Sicilians, not having quite enough money to pay them, gave them a coat and Paul Lombardo accepted it and put it on: the coat was infected and soon the two brothers died because of the disease, and in the days following, their closest relatives. In any case, the epidemic came to Fossa.
Hearing the news, the two mayors of Reggio, Genovese and Giuseppe Antonio Melissari wanted to investigate the matter; so the governor, Diego Ferri, from historical sources described as a bad-tempered man and authoritarian ruler, recently appointed, sent Fossa two of the best doctors of the region, Saverio Fucetola and Francesco Marrari. The plague was ascertained by these two specialists, but did not stop the illegal smuggling with Sicily, in reality practiced by many local boats: the plague began to spread enormously even on the shores of Calabria. The governor Ferri and the two mayors then considered Fossa the scapegoat source of the epidemic and ordered an expedition against the small town. According to reports from Luigi's Prayer, on the morning of June 23, 3,200 heavily armed men departed from Reggio, of whom 200 were Swiss mercenaries and the remainder citizens of Reggio, under the leadership of Diego Ferri. Initially, the residents of Fossa tried to resist, but they had to yield.
All the inhabitants, including old men, women and children, were forced to strip naked and to be washed with oil and vinegar. The Reggio were given their clothes and personal property and then forced to march naked up to Punta Pezzo. Then the armed men returned to Reggio and the next day with artillery burned the entire village, with houses, animals, boats, trees, and quantities of oil and wine set on fire, even the Church of Maria SS.ma delle Grazie di Pezzo where it was believed that the plague had taken refuge. The Fossa people remained in miserable conditions at the beach of Pezzo for several days, without receiving any help. Ferri ordered Carlo Ruffo, Duke of Bagnara and Lord of Fiumara di Muro to provide for them, as the Fossa people were still part of the Fiumanese feud. But even the Duke did not care about them: he first denied the plague, and pretended to be irritated by the act performed by the Reggio against his employees, then dumped these charges on the University of Fiumara, promising reimbursement of expenses. But it was only sent a few beans and an ox, certainly insufficient for all the inhabitants. Only the captain of a boat that was carrying onions from Tropea took pity on them and offered his poor load. Finally, between Fossa and the neighboring towns about eighty people died from the plague. Reggini people thought they had thus preserved the city from the disease, but in early July, the disease also came to Reggio, where in a year of plague there were recorded about 5,000 deaths, with about another 500 dead of exhaustion and hunger and another 500 sentenced to death by the governor Ferri. At Messina, of 62,775 inhabitants, just 11,436 were left, that is to say that there were 51,319 deaths. Government aid was absorbed by Reggio and Messina and for the people of Fossa nothing came. Subsequently, Pope Benedict XIV sent 100,000 ducats to the countries affected by the plague, but also this time in Fossa did not touch anything of the money allocated.
The birth of Villa San Giovanni The turning point in the history of the area occurred in the late eighteenth century, when Rocco Antonio Caracciolo, wealthy landowner and silk entrepreneur from Fossa, wanted to remove the hamlets of Fossa, Pezzo, Cannitello, Piale and Acciarello from the then University of Fiumara di Muro, thanks to the good offices of the Bourbon court of the Kingdom of Naples, in order to give political and administrative unity to small communities that are distant from each other however rivals. After a bitter confrontation with the Greek family, another important noble family of Fossese, the new center was named Fossa first and then Villa San Giovanni (the new name given by the decree of King Ferdinand IV of 6 November 1791). Villa then had a population of about 1,200 inhabitants. The town was then devastated by an earthquake on 5 February 1783. In 1797 the villagers then got to elect their own mayors (three, according to the order of the time) and the birth of the University of Villa San Giovanni, corresponding to the current municipality, can be dated to the following year.
On 7 January 7, 1799, Cardinal Fabrizio Ruffo disembarked at Pezzo, and began his reconquest of the Kingdom of Naples; from 8 February many volunteers from the area began to join the army of the Holy Faith at Pezzo.
In 1807, Cannitello and Piale broke away from Villa, forming their own municipality, with headquarters in Cannitello, but unable to understand Pezzo, which remained inside Villa.
The Napoleonic period and Gioacchino Murat In 1810 Gioacchino Murat, King of Naples and brother-in-law of Napoleon Bonaparte, for four months ruled the southern kingdom from the heights of Piale. He, moving from Naples to the conquest of Sicily (where King Ferdinand IV had taken refuge under the protection of the English, an army which was camped near Punta Faro in Messina), arrived in Scilla on 3 June 1810 and remained there until 5 July, when the great Piale encampment was completed. In the short period of stay, Murat built the three forts of Torre Cavallo, Altafiumara and Piale, the latter with a telegraph tower. On 26 September of the same year, seeing the conquest of Sicily as a difficult undertaking, Murat abandoned the Piale encampment and left for the capital.
The French troops were present in the strategic territory of Villa throughout the first fifteen years of the nineteenth century; this constituted a negative element for the majority of the population and for the local economy. In fact, the Napoleonic government constantly imposed extraordinary expenses on the municipalities of Villa and Cannitello for the maintenance of the troops stationed there, which often harmed the flourishing commercial activities of the city, such as the spinning mill of Rocco Antonio Caracciolo. In addition, the proximity of Villa to the Sicilian coast exposed it to warfare between the French based in Piale and the English quartered in Torre Faro. In general, however, the French also brought some good news to the Kingdom, which was maintained after the Bourbon restoration, such as public schools, post offices, banks, telegraph and (not least) legislative codification. During his presence, Murat also took care to eradicate the banditry present in the area, entrusting this task to General Charles Antoine Manhès, who obtained good results.
From the Bourbon Restoration to the Unity of Italy In the years following the restoration of the Bourbons continued urban development of Villa, so much so that in 1817 Antonio Caracciolo Rocco oversaw the final construction and arrangement of the cemetery. Before then, the dead were buried in churches or in certain campaign funds used for this purpose. The government in those years chose Villa as the headquarters of the central post office, a new service imported by the French, as it represented the main ferry point for Sicily and one of the most important road junctions of the province. The construction of the large building destined to house the Post Office had already been contracted, and the Ristori director had already come to Villa to order the offices, when the transfer of this office to the capital city was ordered from Reggio, which obtained it. The great palace was later sold at auction to the Caminiti brothers of Domenico Antonio, who were then masters of mail for Villa and surroundings.
In 1823 it was decided that Florio's first steamer had to stop at Villa to take passengers and mail to Naples, but again the Reggio demanded that the steamer stop in Reggio, as the provincial capital. In those years the Prince Francesco Ruffo, brother of Cardinal Fabrizio Ruffo and last Lord of Fiumara di Muro and nearby Motte, who had at that time a bitter civil dispute with the City of Villa due to some land Aspromonte from the feudal patrimony of Ruffo, called Forest d'Aspromonte, which had been assigned to the municipality of Villese; but without any feeling of revenge, established in 1823, also teaching at Villa twice a week the nautical master of Pietro Barbaro being Villa, Pezzo, Cannitello seaside resorts. In fact, at that time there were, only in the Villa, 323 sailors and 36 boats. It was a major breakthrough for the Villese Navy, which had so many young people educated in the difficult art of sailing.