Europe’s only mainland volcano of the last century
Mount Vesuvius, a somma–stratovolcano on the Gulf of Naples about nine kilometres east of the city, is the one volcano on mainland Europe that has erupted within the past century. Its AD 79 Plinian explosion buried Pompeii, Herculaneum, Oplontis, and Stabiae, lofting ash some 33 kilometres high.
More than a thousand deaths are estimated from that eruption, which ejected rock and pumice at about 600,000 cubic metres per second. Today roughly three million people live close enough to be affected, and 600,000 or more inside the zone of greatest danger—hence Decade Volcano status. The modern Gran Cono grew inside the Somma caldera left when an older, taller edifice collapsed; Romans already worshipped Jupiter Vesuvius and painted the mountain as a genius serpent in Pompeian lararia. The only eyewitness record of the disaster is a pair of letters Pliny the Younger wrote to the historian Tacitus, including an account of his uncle's death, which is why such explosive outbursts are now called Plinian.
Etymologies range from Greek “unquenchable” to Indo-European roots for shine, burn, or hearth (akin to Vesta). Diodorus linked the Phlegraean “fiery plain” and Hercules to the smoking mountain.
Borehole cores more than 2,000 metres deep show volcanism here for at least 400,000 years. Vesuvius itself began about 25,000 years ago and once stood some 2,000 metres high; the Somma caldera first collapsed in a VEI 6 blast roughly 18,300 years ago. Around 3,800 years ago the Avellino eruption buried Bronze Age villages near Nola, where archaeologists in 2001 found thousands of footprints of people fleeing north.
Since Pompeii the mountain has erupted dozens of times; ash from the 472 and 1631 events fell on Constantinople, more than 1,200 kilometres away. Its two latest eruptive spells, 1875–1906 and 1913–1944, each lasted over thirty years, and nothing has erupted since 1944. Today the main cone reaches 1,281 metres, and its crater gives off little more than sulphurous steam.
Source: Mount Vesuvius
