46 Fun Facts About Mount Etna

Mount Etna is on the east coast of which island?

Sicily. Etna erupts almost constantly, yet the fertile soil its lava leaves behind is why vineyards and orchards crowd the lower slopes.

What type of volcano is Mount Etna?

Stratovolcano. The steep cone of layered lava and ash is the young part of Etna: it grew on top of a much older, flatter shield volcano.

In one Greek myth, which monster did Zeus trap beneath Mount Etna?

Typhon. Greek poets blamed the eruptions on him: the hundred-headed monster lies pinned under the mountain, and the earth shakes whenever he turns.

The Romans believed which god lived and worked beneath Mount Etna, sending up its fire and sparks?

Vulcan. The Romans placed the fire god's forge under Etna, and his name went on to give English the word 'volcano'.

Etna was named a Decade Volcano for its eruptive history and what else?

Nearby population. The title marks 16 volcanoes that are both active and close to many people, and its 'Decade' was the 1990s, which the United Nations gave over to cutting the toll of natural disasters.

Etna is the highest mountain in Italy outside which range?

The Alps. Etna's height shifts with every big eruption, and fresh rock piled on its summit craters set records in 2021 and 2024 that lifted it past 3,400 metres.

Etna is roughly two and a half times the height of which volcano, Italy's next tallest active one?

Vesuvius. The volcano that buried Pompeii is far smaller, at about 1,280 metres, yet more than two million people live on and around it.

Which volcano on Tenerife is Spain's highest peak, taller even than Mount Etna?

Mount Teide. The Canary Islands volcano stands about 300 metres higher than Etna but last erupted in 1909, while its lower Italian rival erupts almost every year.

Etna sits above the convergent boundary between which two tectonic plates?

The African and Eurasian. Africa is creeping north into Europe, and the same slow collision feeds the volcanoes of the Greek islands, Santorini among them.

Which Roman emperor, a tireless traveller, is said to have climbed Etna to watch the sunrise?

Hadrian. His ancient biography says he sailed to the island and climbed the volcano for a dawn said to be many-coloured like a rainbow, one stop in a reign spent touring the empire.

Etna's Italian nickname Mongibello joins 'monte' to 'jabal', a word for mountain in which language?

Arabic. The island was under Arab rule in the early Middle Ages, and when Italian speakers later put their own 'monte' in front of 'jabal', the result meant 'mountain mountain'.

In Arthurian romance, Mongibel at Etna is the otherworld castle of which figure?

Morgan le Fay. Normans carried the Arthur stories to the island, and the mirages that hover over the nearby Strait of Messina are still called Fata Morgana after her.

By legend, which Greek philosopher leapt into Etna so that people would think he had become a god?

Empedocles. The story adds that the volcano spoiled the trick by throwing back one of the bronze sandals he always wore.

After Etna's ash caved in roofs across Catania around 122 BCE, what relief did Rome grant the town?

Ten years without taxes. So much ash and cinder fell on Catania that roofs gave way, and Rome let the town keep a decade of its dues to pay for rebuilding.

In which ancient epic do Trojan refugees hide overnight in woods below an erupting Etna?

The Aeneid. Virgil has Aeneas and his crew land after dark and cower in a grove all night, unable to see what is making the terrible roar.

What turned most of Etna's 1669 lava away from Catania into the sea?

The city walls. They steered the flow south into the sea and spared most of Catania; workers upslope had also tried to cut the lava a new path, the first recorded attempt to divert a flow.

Catania survived Etna's great 1669 lava flow, only to be almost wholly destroyed 24 years later by what?

An earthquake. The 1693 shock levelled the city, whereas accounts written during the 1669 eruption record no deaths at all, despite later tales of thousands killed.

What did lava bury in 1971, along with the first generation of the summit cable car?

Footage of that eruption appears in the 1979 film Days of Fury, hosted by Vincent Price.

How did engineers finally stop Etna's flow from reaching the town of Zafferana in May 1992?

Blasting open its lava tube. Earth barriers had been overrun, so engineers breached the roofed channel near the vent and sent the flow down a fresh ditch, kilometres back up the slope.

Ash from Etna's 2002 eruption drifted across the Mediterranean as far as which country?

Libya. The plume was plain to see from space as it crossed the sea, and back on Etna the same eruption wrecked the resort of Piano Provenzana.

Footage of Etna's 2002-2003 eruptions was used to build which planet in Star Wars: Episode III?

Mustafar. When Etna erupted, Lucasfilm sent camera crews to film the real lava that glows behind Obi-Wan and Anakin's duel.

Surveys published in 2018 confirmed that the great bulk of Mount Etna is slowly doing what?

Sliding toward the sea. The mountain rests on soft sediment and creeps east by a centimetre or more a year, and sensors on the seabed have caught its underwater flank slipping too.

Sudden summit explosions on Etna in 1979 and 1987 killed eleven people; who were they?

Tourists. Nine sightseers died in 1979 when the Bocca Nuova crater burst without warning for about thirty seconds, and a mother and her young son were killed near the summit in 1987.

In 2000, volcanologists on Etna filmed which rare spectacle drifting up from the Bocca Nuova crater?

Vortex rings of smoke. The scientists who filmed them preferred 'steam rings', since the hoops held hardly any ash, and some hung in the sky for ten minutes.

Which great hollow on Etna's eastern flank catches many of its lava flows before they can reach a town?

Valle del Bove. The 'Valley of the Ox' is uninhabited, so lava that pours into it, as in 2007 and 2026, spreads over old flows instead of heading for the towns below.

Whose army did an Etna eruption force inland in the 390s BCE?

Carthage's. Lava made the coast road impassable, so its general Himilco marched his troops around the mountain while the fleet sailed on without them.

In Ovid's telling, which goddess lit two pine torches in Etna's fires to search the earth by night?

Ceres. She was hunting for her daughter Proserpina, who had been carried off to the underworld, and she bore Etna's fire through the frosty dark without sleeping.

Which Patricia Highsmith thriller sends its antihero to a fictional Italian resort called Mongibello, Etna's nickname?

The Talented Mr. Ripley. Tom Ripley is paid to go to the seaside village and coax the playboy Dickie Greenleaf home, and ends up wanting Dickie's life for himself.

What is the Circumetnea, whose original route looped for over 100 km around Etna's base?

A narrow-gauge railway. Opened in the 1890s, it was laid in a great loop through the towns at Etna's foot, yet it ended at Riposto, under 30 km up the coast from its Catania start.

Etna's Piano Provenzana and Sapienza Refuge are bases for which sport?

Skiing. Lifts run on both the north and south sides of the volcano over pistes laid on old lava, and the northern resort had to be rebuilt after the 2002 eruption wrecked its lifts and hotels.

On Etna in March 2017, ten people including a BBC crew were hurt when flowing lava hit what?

Snow. The lava flashed it into superheated steam, and the explosion pelted visitors and the film crew with hot rock, leaving them with cuts, bruises and burns.

Which cycling race finished a stage at Etna's Sapienza Refuge in both 2011 and 2017?

The Giro d'Italia. Alberto Contador won the 2011 stage on the volcano, but the result was struck from the record the next year when a doping ban cost him the whole race.

Flights at Catania stop when Etna erupts partly because volcanic ash does what inside a jet engine?

Melts and clogs it. A jet engine burns hotter than the ash's melting point, so the grit it swallows turns molten, sticks to the parts inside and can stall the engine in mid-air.

The Cirneco dell'Etna, named for the volcano, is a lean and ancient breed of which animal?

Dog. The Cirneco is a small, quick hound that islanders have kept for centuries to hunt rabbits, following them by scent over rough ground.

Catania has long paraded the veil of which patron saint to turn back Etna's lava?

Saint Agatha. Tradition says the lava of 252 stopped when her veil was carried out to meet it, a year after she was martyred there, and she has been invoked against eruptions ever since.

In an ancient Greek satyr play set at Etna's foot, which giant traps Odysseus and his crew in a cave?

Polyphemus. Roman poets kept the blinded Cyclops on the volcano, and the rock stacks off nearby Aci Trezza are still pointed out as the boulders he hurled after Odysseus's ship.

Which British admiral did King Ferdinand make Duke of Bronte, a town at Etna's foot, in 1799?

Horatio Nelson. The title thanked him for helping the king win back Naples, and it is thought to be why his admirer Patrick Brunty, father of the novelist sisters, respelled his surname Brontë.

For which crop is the Etna town of Bronte best known?

Pistachio nuts. The trees take root in rough old lava on Etna's western slope, so the crop is still gathered by hand, with the pickers balancing on the rocks.

By one derivation, the name Etna goes back to an ancient word meaning what?

To burn. Dictionaries trace the name to an old word for 'the fiery one', and it had pull: the tyrant Hieron drove out the people of Catania and refounded the place as Aetna.

The hungry years after Caesar's murder were once blamed on Etna; ice cores now blame a volcano in which US state?

Alaska. Ash in Greenland ice matched Okmok, in the Aleutian Islands, which blew early in 43 BCE; Etna's eruption the year before was minor and may have dimmed the Roman sun, but the famines are now laid at Okmok's door.

Which town's ancient Greek theatre is famed for its view of Etna?

Taormina. The theatre frames the smoking summit behind its stage, but the 'Greek' landmark is mostly Roman brick, rebuilt on the plan of the older building.

The American company Aetna, named after the volcano, is best known for selling what?

Insurance. The name was first borrowed in 1819 by a Hartford firm that sold cover against fire, and it passed to the life and health insurer that split off from it in 1853.

Which Athenian playwright wrote The Women of Aetna around 476 BCE for a new town below the volcano?

Aeschylus. The tyrant Hieron, the town's founder, invited him over to stage it, and the poet came back to the island to die: in legend, when an eagle dropped a tortoise on his head.

Etna's Aci towns are named for Acis, in myth a shepherd loved by which sea nymph?

Galatea. In Ovid's tale a jealous giant crushed Acis under a boulder torn from Etna, and she turned his blood into the stream that took his name.

Catania's Castello Ursino, left landlocked by Etna's 1669 lava, was built for which emperor?

Frederick II. His castle stood on a cliff over the water until the lava surrounded it, filled its moat and pushed the shore away; it now sits among streets and shops and holds the civic museum.

Which English novelist, living within sight of Etna in the early 1920s, called the volcano 'that wicked witch'?

D. H. Lawrence. Sea and Sardinia begins with him deciding that the mountain breaks the soul of every people who settle beneath it, so he must get away, and he sails for Sardinia.