Stromboli

Stromboli is a volcano you can watch breathing. The island is simply the top of a cone that rises 926 metres above the Tyrrhenian Sea and continues more than two and a half kilometres below it, and it has been erupting almost without pause for somewhere between two and five thousand years. Every few minutes to every hour or so, a crater near the summit throws up a burst of glowing fragments, then falls quiet again. This rhythm of short, moderate explosions is so characteristic that volcanologists named it after the island: a "Strombolian" eruption, wherever it happens in the world, is a reference to this place. The constant glow, visible far out at sea, is why Stromboli is called the Lighthouse of the Mediterranean.

The most dramatic feature is the Sciara del Fuoco, the "stream of fire", a vast horseshoe-shaped scar on the northwestern flank left by repeated collapses of the cone over the last 13,000 years. Glowing material rolls down its black slope straight into the sea, and at night the view of incandescent blocks tumbling towards the water is one of the great natural spectacles of Europe. Around two kilometres offshore to the northeast stands Strombolicchio, a steep rock tower that is the eroded plug of an older volcanic vent, crowned by a small lighthouse.

Life clings to the edges. The whitewashed villages of San Vincenzo and San Bartolo spread across the northeastern shore, while tiny Ginostra clings to the southwestern side. The island once had several thousand inhabitants, but emigration in the twentieth century left only a few hundred. Roberto Rossellini's 1950 film Stromboli, with Ingrid Bergman, made the island famous abroad and fixed its image of black sand, harsh slopes and isolation. Together with the rest of the Aeolian archipelago, Stromboli was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2000 as an outstanding record of how volcanic islands are built and destroyed. It is also a reminder of that power: a sudden paroxysm in July 2019 killed a hiker on the slopes.

Getting there

Stromboli is an island reached only by sea. The main departure port is Milazzo on the north coast of Sicily, about 65 km away, from which Liberty Lines hydrofoils take a little over an hour on direct runs and around three hours when calling at the other Aeolian Islands. A Siremar overnight ferry also links Stromboli with Naples a couple of times a week, taking around ten hours. The nearest airport is Reggio Calabria Airport (REG), about 90 km away; from there, continue to Milazzo or the Messina Strait ports for the boats.