Italy is one step closer to building the world’s longest suspension bridge

Tobias Carroll

Rome: If you’re traveling in southern Italy and trying to get from Calabria to Sicily by car, or vice versa, you’re going to need to take it on board a ferry. In the very near future, though, that’s likely to change, thanks to an ambitious engineering project that, once completed, will see the creation of the longest suspension bridge in the world. That two-mile-long infrastructure project, the Strait of Messina Bridge, took a big step towards being built earlier this month.

In early August, the Italian Interministerial Committee for Economic Planning and Sustainable Development gave its approval for the final design of the bridge. Webuild Group, whose projects include an expansion of the Panama Canal and the Genoa-Saint George Bridge, is set to head the new project, along with a number of collaborators who have worked on large-scale bridge projects in Japan and Turkey.

The Strait of Messina Bridge’s suspeended section will stretch for just over two miles. (Specifically, 3,300 meters.) This announcement comes on the heels of the completion of several other high-profile suspension bridges since 2020. China’s Shenzhen-Zhongshan Link project, which opened last year, includes one of the globe’s longest suspension bridges. In 2022, the longest such structure in the world, Turkey’s 1915 Çanakkale Bridge, opened to the public. The consulting group COWI, who worked on that project, is also part of the team involved in the Strait of Messina Bridge.

The bridge connecting Sicily and Calabria has an understandably sizable price tag: $15.5 billion. According to what Italy’s Minister of Infrastructure and Transport, Matteo Salvini has told members of the media, the project is currently on schedule to be completed between 2032 and 2033.