The Straits of Messina connect the Tyrrhenian Sea to the north with the Ionian Sea to the south, within the central Mediterranean.
 
In Greek mythology and Homer’s Odyssey, Scylla is a legendary monster with 6 man eating dog heads coming out of her midsection, that lives on one side of a narrow channel of water, opposite her counterpart, the sea-swallowing monster Charybdis (a whirlpool). The two sides of the strait are within an arrow's range of each other—so close that sailors attempting to avoid the whirlpools of Charybdis would pass dangerously close to Scylla and vice versa.