Top of the World
After admiring the Fountain of Neptune, stay in Piazza dell'Unità d'Italia and take a look at the sea to contemplate another wonder of Messina, the Madonnina di Porto. The monument, consecrated and inaugurated by Archbishop Paino on Aug. 12, 1934, was blessed and illuminated on the same afternoon by Pope Pius XI, in connection from Castelgandolfo, thanks to a special ultra-short-wave radio system developed by Guglielmo Marconi. Placed on a 35-meter-high votive stele, the Madonnina del Porto blesses and welcomes those who enter the city from the port. The statue is the work of Tore Edmondo Calabrò, who took as his model the silver one by Lio Gangeri on the varetta carried in procession every year on June 3 on the feast of the patron saint. It was cast in gilded bronze and the stele designed by Engineer Francesco Barbaro, director of the Archbishop's Technical Office. On the circular forte Bell of the Castle of the Most Holy Savior stands the inscription VOS ET IPSAM CIVITATEM BENEDICIMUS, words translated into Latin and taken from the Letter that Mary of Nazareth delivered to a delegation from Messina who visited her in Palestine in the year 42 AD. A copy of the monument faithfully reproduced to scale, in crystal, was given to Pope Pius XI soon after its inauguration. His successor, Pius XII, later returned it to Messina and today it is kept in the Painian Library of the "St. Pius X" Archdiocesan Seminary.
