Complex sentence: The earthquake wrecked the commercial section along Messina's Corso Vittorio Emanuele skirting the seafront which included rows of warehouses: and the elegant palazzatta, a long sequence of seamless 17th-century buildings that fronted the sickle-shaped harbour, had sustained irreparable damage.
Split into simpler sentences: The earthquake wrecked the commercial section along Messina's Corso Vittorio Emanuele that skirted the seafront which included the elegant "palazzatta". This was a long sequence of seamless 17th-century buildings that fronted the sickle-shaped harbour and most had sustained irreparable damage.