Reggio is one of the oldest cities in Italy. Founded as the Greek colony of Rhegion in the eighth century BC on an older Ausonian-Italic settlement, it was among the principal cities of Magna Graecia, facing Sicily across three kilometres of water.

That position — on the strait, on the fault — has defined it. The city has been destroyed and rebuilt repeatedly across its history, by invasion and by earthquake.

The defining event is recent enough to be in family memory. At 5.20 on the morning of 28 December 1908 , an earthquake struck the strait and was followed within minutes by a tsunami. Reggio and Messina were levelled. The death toll ran to tens of thousands across the two cities and the surrounding country, and it remains among the worst disasters in modern European history.

What exists now is the city built afterwards — low, wide, laid out on a grid, deliberately built to withstand the next one. The Lungomare along the water is the result, and it is the reason the modern city looks so unlike other southern Italian towns.

One more layer, less dramatic but important for records. In July 1927 , under a royal decree, the comune of Reggio absorbed fourteen neighbouring municipalities along the strait and up toward the Aspromonte — the so-called Grande Reggio , more than tripling its territory. In December 1932 part of that was undone, and Villa San Giovanni was reconstituted as a separate comune, taking with it the territory of the former comuni of Cannitello, Campo di Calabria and Fiumara.