Mount Etna
Europe's tallest and most restless volcano, towering over eastern Sicily
Sicilians call it simply Mongibello, the mountain of mountains, and from almost anywhere on the island's east coast its snow-streaked summit dominates the horizon, often trailing a plume of steam or a glow of fire. Mount Etna is Europe's largest and most continuously active volcano, a beast that has been erupting in some form for the better part of three thousand recorded years. Yet far from driving people away, its fertile volcanic soils have drawn farmers, vintners and whole cities to cluster on its lower flanks, an intimate and uneasy bargain with the fire below.
Etna stands roughly 3,400 metres tall, though its exact height changes year to year as summit craters build up and collapse. It is a stratovolcano of staggering scale, covering some 1,200 square kilometres with a base circumference of about 140 kilometres, dwarfing Vesuvius. Its eruptions are mostly effusive, sending rivers of basaltic lava down well-worn channels, punctuated by spectacular fountains and Strombolian bursts from its summit craters. The volcano sits at a complex junction where the African plate dives beneath Europe, and its long, gentle slopes are scarred by hundreds of subsidiary cones from flank eruptions.
Etna's near-constant activity has made it a natural laboratory, one of the best-studied volcanoes on the planet and a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2013. Greek myth placed the forge of Hephaestus and the prison of the giant Typhon beneath it. Today its slopes host vineyards producing prized Etna wines, pistachio groves, ski runs and a cable car that carries visitors toward the smoking summit. Lava flows occasionally threaten towns like Catania, and ash falls regularly close the nearby airport, but Sicilians have long since learned to live with their magnificent, temperamental neighbour.