This installation was typical in Messina, and I wondered if this was the way in which the supply to each building was made available?

These wires were all above the street over 8 feet and were run between buildings.

I think they were 230 volts?

That's typically Italian. All other countries I know of have either proper US style OH services with a riser or underground service with a meter inside the house. Only the Italian run Quadruplex OH on their facades.
It's 230/400V 3ph, you can see the 3 phases and the neutral bundled together. This is an extraordinarily bad one though, the ones I saw in ROme and some small villages were muchg neater, though still just plain Quadruplex clipped to the facades. Same with street lighting and phone lines.
Austrian underground services usually have a concrete housing, about 5' high with the PoCo fuses and the N/Ground bond at the road if the house is set back or the disconnect enclosure is sunk into the facade, sometimes also in the hallway, directly next to the front door (only apartment buildings).

I've seen similar wiring in southern Spain.

Otherwise, I'll echo Ragnar. In Sweden the meter is often in a cabinet on the outside of the house. This to facilitate access for the meter guy and make tampering harder. Except for the countryside, OH services are non-existent.

[This message has been edited by C-H (edited 05-28-2003).]

The gas/water pipework is much uglier. seems to be going in all directions.

In England, most of the services in towns have the mains run under the street with underground services tapped for each building.

Overhead services are used in more rural areas. Here's an older style service:


Newer drops use a cable with concentric neutral (this one has clearly been converted from the older style, as you can see the spare insulator):


Here's a wider view of the same drop:


You do sometimes see cables run along the wall of a building. We have a lot of what are called "semi-detached" houses in Britain (what you would call a duplex in the States), and where these exist in rural areas with overhead feeds you often see a single drop to one corner of the building and separate feeders tapped from the bracket to each half of the building.




[This message has been edited by pauluk (edited 05-30-2003).]