Mount Vesuvius

Vesuvius rises from the shore of the Gulf of Naples about 9 km east of the city, and its profile explains its history. What looks from Naples like a double-humped mountain is a young cone, the Gran Cono, sitting inside the broken rim of an older and once far taller volcano, Monte Somma, which collapsed in a series of huge eruptions. The main cone reaches 1,281 metres; the Somma ridge peaks at 1,132 metres at Punta Nasone, and between the two lies the valley of the Atrio di Cavallo. Volcanologists took the term somma volcano from here for any volcano with a caldera wrapped around a newer cone.

The eruption of AD 79 buried Pompeii, Herculaneum, Oplontis and Stabiae. A column of ash, pumice and gas rose to about 33 km, and pyroclastic surges swept down the slopes on the second day. The only eyewitness account to survive is a pair of letters by Pliny the Younger to the historian Tacitus, describing the black cloud over the bay and the death of his uncle, Pliny the Elder, who had sailed across from Misenum to help and died at Stabiae. The word Plinian, used for violently explosive eruptions everywhere, comes from those letters.

Vesuvius has erupted many times since, notably in 1631, several times in the 18th and 19th centuries, and in 1906, 1929 and 1944, and it is the only volcano on the European mainland to have erupted in the past hundred years. The 1944 eruption destroyed the funicular that had carried visitors up the cone since 1880, the railway celebrated in the Neapolitan song Funiculì, Funiculà. Today the crater emits only sulphur-rich steam from vents on its walls and floor, but about 600,000 people live in the red zone that the emergency plan would evacuate, making Vesuvius one of the most closely watched volcanoes on Earth. The Osservatorio Vesuviano monitors it from Ercolano with seismic, gravimetric, GPS and satellite networks.

The land around the volcano has been a national park since 5 June 1995. A road climbs to within about 200 vertical metres of the summit; from there the only way up is on foot, along a path that spirals up the cone to the crater rim. At the top you look into the crater, where steam still rises from vents, and out over the Bay of Naples and the plain where Pompeii and Herculaneum lie. Seeing the crater and one of the buried cities on the same day makes the connection between them hard to forget.

Getting there

The nearest town is Somma Vesuviana, about 6 km from the summit, and Naples is about 9 km to the west. Naples International Airport (NAP) is about 14 km away. The final section to the crater is on foot.