Return to Vesuvius photos

Rising dramatically out of the plain about 9 miles southeast of Naples on the shore of the Bay of Naples, Vesuvius has been since the 17C the only volcano on the European mainland which is still intermittently active. (Etna is on the island of Sicily.)

In the pre-Christian era the mountain was considered to be inactive. But all that changed on one of the most famous dates in volcanic history-August 24 in 79 AD-when Pompei, Herculaneum, and Stabia were buried beneath as much as 6 feet of volcanic ash.

The "mountain" is actually comprised of two cones. The truncated cone that is so familiar (and shown in these pictures) is actually Mt. Somma (currently 3,700 ft); Vesuvius proper rises from the floor of the Somma crater, reaching up to a current 4,190 ft. This crater was formed by the eruption of 79. (All measurements have to be dated, since the face of the mountain has changed drastically with each eruption.)

After the famous blast of 79 and until 1139, there were 15 eruptions, none so great as the Pompei destruction. The volcano was quiet into the 17C, with woods growing up to the summit. Then in 1631 a major eruption sent lava all the way to the sea, and another in 1794 destroyed the nearby town of Torre del Greco. Minor eruptions continued until 1944, when the last major event to date destroyed a funicular from Herculaneum. The continuous black smoke that had poured from the summit stopped then. Since then, there have been only intermittent wisps of white smoke to testify that this volcano has probably not spoken its last word.