57 Fun Facts About Mount Vesuvius

Vesuvius stands on the shore of which body of water?

The Gulf of Naples. As the AD 79 eruption shook the coast, an eyewitness saw its waters sucked back from the shore, leaving sea creatures stranded on dry sand.

Vesuvius is in which region of Italy?

Campania. The Romans called it Campania felix, the happy land, and the ash that keeps its soil so fertile is why people have always rebuilt on the volcano's slopes.

What type of volcano is Vesuvius?

A stratovolcano. Its steep cone is built from layers of lava, ash and pumice, and the thick magma that traps gas beneath them is why its eruptions tend to be explosive.

The steep rim partly encircling Vesuvius's cone is the remnant of which older, much higher structure?

Mount Somma. It collapsed in a series of huge eruptions, and geologists now call any volcano with a newer cone inside an old caldera a 'somma volcano'.

The wine grown on Vesuvius's volcanic slopes is named after the tears of which figure?

Jesus Christ. The wine is Lacryma Christi, 'tears of Christ', after a legend that he wept over Lucifer's fall from heaven and his tears gave rise to the vines.

The only surviving eyewitness account of the AD 79 eruption is two letters written to which historian?

Tacitus. He had asked how Pliny the Elder died so he could record it in his Histories, but only the two replies survive: the books that covered AD 79 are lost.

Which rebel leader camped on Vesuvius in 73 BC and escaped a Roman siege on ropes of wild vines?

Spartacus. Trapped on the then-quiet mountain, he and his gladiators climbed down an unguarded cliff on the vine ropes and routed the Roman camp from behind.

What post did Pliny the Elder hold at Misenum when the eruption began?

Commander of the Roman fleet. The post let him order warships launched to take people off the coast below the volcano before he sailed into the ashfall himself.

Advised by his helmsman to turn back from the falling cinders, what did Pliny the Elder reply?

'Fortune favours the brave', he said, then sailed on to a terrified friend's villa, where he calmly bathed, dined and went to sleep to steady everyone's nerves.

Fleeing a building filling with tephra, Pliny the Elder's party protected their heads with what?

Pillows. They tied them on with cloths against the falling pumice, having judged the open fields safer than a house the earthquakes were shaking apart.

Pliny the Elder died at which town, one of those buried by the eruption?

Stabiae. The onshore wind that sped his ship in pinned every boat to the beach, so when the fumes came his companions fled on foot and left him where he fell.

Pliny the Elder's nephew blamed sulphurous fumes for his death, but what have some modern writers suggested instead?

A stroke or heart attack. He was heavily built, his companions breathed the same air and lived, and his body was found uninjured, looking more asleep than dead.

The AD 79 eruption column rose some 30 km, reaching which layer of the atmosphere?

The stratosphere. The column stood for about 18 hours raining pumice, then began collapsing into the fast, ground-hugging surges that killed those who had stayed.

The eyewitness to the AD 79 eruption likened its cloud to which tree?

A pine. He reasoned that the blast drove the cloud straight up like a trunk until its force faded, when it spread sideways under its own weight like branches.

Vesuvius's AD 79 eruption is classed as 'Plinian'; which American volcano erupted in the same way in the 20th century?

Mount St. Helens. In 1980 its ash column climbed some 24 km in under 15 minutes, the towering kind of blast named after the Roman who described Vesuvius's.

Pompeii was still repairing damage from a great earthquake that struck during the reign of which emperor?

Nero. A later tremor shook the region while he was making his stage debut as a singer nearby, and Suetonius says he carried on until his song was finished.

Herculaneum, buried far deeper than Pompeii, preserved a Roman villa's whole library of what?

Papyrus scrolls. The heat turned them to brittle charcoal in what is now called the Villa of the Papyri, and because unrolling destroys them, researchers read them with X-ray scans instead.

The shapes of Pompeii's victims were recovered by pouring what into hollows in the ash?

Plaster. The bodies had decayed inside the hardened ash, leaving cavities in their shape, and Giuseppe Fiorelli's method of filling them gave back the victims' final postures.

Excavations in the 1980s found many victims of the eruption huddled where at Herculaneum?

In arched vaults by the old shore. So few bodies had turned up before that most townspeople were thought to have escaped; they had died in what were probably boathouses, waiting for rescue by sea.

Which Game of Thrones star played a gladiator caught in Vesuvius's eruption in the 2014 film Pompeii?

Kit Harington. His gladiator Milo and the merchant's daughter he loves cannot outrun the final surge, so the film ends on their ash-coated bodies locked in a kiss.

Which 2018 find at Pompeii suggested the eruption came weeks after the traditional 24 August?

A charcoal graffito. Probably a workman renovating the house had scrawled a mid-October date on a wall, though sceptics note that it names no year.

Pliny the Elder, who died in the AD 79 eruption, is best remembered as the author of which 37-book work?

Natural History. For all its uneven accuracy it stayed Europe's authority on science into the Middle Ages, and its author's urge to study a strange cloud is what drew him to the eruption.

Which emperor had been reigning for only a few months when Vesuvius erupted in AD 79?

Titus. He put former consuls in charge of relief and used the estates of victims who had died without heirs to help rebuild, earning a name for generosity.

In 472, ash from Vesuvius fell on which distant city, more than 1,200 km away?

Constantinople. A chronicler there wrote that fine dust covered the face of Europe and turned day to night, and the city marked the fearful ashfall every 6 November.

As Vesuvius erupted in 1631, which saint's relics were carried in procession to halt it?

San Gennaro, also called Januarius. Tradition holds that the eruption began to ebb as his relics were paraded, and his city still honours him for it every 16 December.

After Italy blamed Vesuvius's 1906 eruption for giving up the 1908 Olympics, which city hosted them instead of Rome?

London. Italy told the IOC the money was needed for rebuilding, but Olympic historians argue the decision had in effect been made already, leaving the eruption a convenient excuse.

Vesuvius last erupted during which war?

World War II. In March 1944 its hot ash wrecked some 80 American bombers parked at an airfield near its foot, ruining their fabric control surfaces, engines and windscreens.

Which British band's 2013 hit 'Pompeii' imagines a conversation between two victims of Vesuvius's eruption?

Bastille. Singer Dan Smith wrote it in his bedroom after seeing pictures of the victims, imagining two of them stuck side by side for centuries, and calls it a song about fear of boredom.

Herculaneum is said to have been rediscovered in the early 1700s when workers digging what struck its buried theatre?

A well. The shaft came down on the stage of the theatre, and treasure hunters tunnelled through the ruins for years before regular excavations began in 1738.

Mark Twain described climbing Vesuvius in which travel book?

The Innocents Abroad. His party lit cigars and cooked eggs over the hot vents at the top, then ploughed back down through knee-deep ash in just four minutes.

Which famous Italian song was written to celebrate the opening of a new route up Vesuvius?

'Funiculì, Funiculà'. Luigi Denza wrote it for the opening of the mountain's funicular railway, and Richard Strauss, hearing it six years later, mistook it for an old folk song and used it in an orchestral work.

Vesuvius's 'red zone' covers the reach of which volcanic hazard?

Pyroclastic flows. These avalanches of hot gas and ash are too fast and too hot to survive, so leaving before an eruption starts is the only protection for the people who live there.

In 2003, families in Vesuvius's red zone were offered cash to do what?

Move away. The regional scheme hoped to thin out the crowded towns over 15 years and ease an evacuation that today's plan says must empty the whole zone within 72 hours of an alarm.

Which British envoy sent the Royal Society eyewitness reports of Vesuvius?

William Hamilton. The husband of Nelson's lover Emma won election to the Royal Society with a 1766 account of an eruption, sent with drawings and samples, and went on studying the volcano for years.

At the Vesuvius Observatory in the 1850s, director Luigi Palmieri designed an early version of which instrument?

A seismograph. His mercury-filled tubes closed an electric circuit at the faintest tremor, and he hoped the shaking they caught would give warning of eruptions.

As of July 2024, Vesuvius stood at which of Italy's four volcanic alert levels?

Green. It is the lowest of the four levels and means nothing unusual is happening: the small earthquakes recorded come from rocks settling inside the crater.

Vesuvius formed where which tectonic plate is subducted beneath the Eurasian plate?

African. The plate creeps north a few centimetres a year, and the water it drags down lowers the melting point of the rock above it, making the magma that feeds the volcano.

Which volcanic island on the western side of the bay below Vesuvius belongs to the same arc of volcanoes?

Ischia. Its last eruption came in 1302, and the island has stayed quiet so long that it is now better known for its thermal spas than for its volcano.

In the 1980s, tens of thousands were moved out of which restless Italian volcano, yet no eruption came?

Campi Flegrei. The ground there rose almost two metres in a few years, cracking homes and the harbour, then stopped: the false alarm every planner of a Vesuvius evacuation fears.

Which Roman philosopher wrote that an earthquake at Pompeii, years before the eruption, killed 600 sheep?

Seneca. He blamed deadly air seeping from the shaken ground, which modern readers take for volcanic gas and an early sign that Vesuvius was stirring.

The Bronze Age Avellino eruption of Vesuvius preserved thousands of which traces of people fleeing the mountain?

Human footprints. The tracks all head away from the volcano, and with so few bodies found most of the fugitives are thought to have escaped, though the land lay abandoned for centuries.

In the eyewitness account of the eruption, many in the fleeing crowd cried out that what no longer existed?

The gods. In a blackness he likened to a sealed, unlit room, some still raised their hands in prayer, but more decided the world was ending in an everlasting night.

Which actor's Doctor has to set off Vesuvius's eruption himself in the 2008 Doctor Who story 'The Fires of Pompeii'?

David Tennant. Two guest actors in the episode later returned as stars of the show: Karen Gillan as the companion Amy Pond and Peter Capaldi as the Twelfth Doctor.

Which Greek geographer suggested Vesuvius's barren summit had once held 'craters of fire'?

Strabo. Writing decades before AD 79, he read the scorched, sooty rocks of the summit correctly, then concluded that the fire had run out of fuel and gone out for good.

A shrine painting from Pompeii's House of the Centenary shows Vesuvius beside which Roman god?

Bacchus. The painting is thought to be the earliest known view of the mountain and shows one vine-covered peak, a hint, some scholars think, that the eruption which buried the house also reshaped the summit.

As earthquakes rocked Misenum during the eruption, the teenage eyewitness sat calmly taking notes from which Roman historian?

Livy. A friend of his uncle's scolded him for copying out extracts while the buildings swayed, and he admitted later that he could not say whether it had been courage or folly.

As ash began to fall on the road out of Misenum, who begged the young eyewitness to leave her behind?

His mother. She said she was old and slow and would die content if she had not caused his death, but he took her by the hand and made her keep up.

Which food survived the eruption at Herculaneum as carbonised rounds, some still in ovens?

Bread. The surge that buried the town charred organic things instead of burning them away, so wooden beds, doors, cloth and even a boat survived along with the loaves.

Why did the first day's rain of pumice hit Pompeii but not Herculaneum?

It was upwind. The wind carried the falling pumice southeast over Pompeii, but it could not save Herculaneum: when the column collapsed, the first surge rolled straight over the town.

When the two-day eruption finally cleared, the eyewitness wrote that ash covered everything like what?

Snow. He walked back through the drifts to a house that was still standing and spent another fearful night there, because the earthquakes had not stopped.

The deadly surges of AD 79 are called 'Peléan', after a volcano on which Caribbean island?

Martinique. Mount Pelée's 1902 eruption sent a glowing surge through the port of Saint-Pierre and killed about 30,000 people, giving science its name for what struck Pompeii.

Research suggests many of Pompeii's famous red walls were which colour before the eruption?

Yellow. Heat and gas from Vesuvius turned yellow ochre red, so the 'Pompeian red' that became the fashion for smart dining rooms was partly an accident of the disaster.

Which novelist's 2003 thriller Pompeii follows a young aqueduct engineer in the days before Vesuvius erupts?

Robert Harris. His engineer is sent to find out why the great aqueduct serving the bay has run dry, and the failing springs turn out to be the first sign of what the mountain is about to do.

After Vesuvius erupted in the early 500s, which Gothic king excused the farmers on its slopes from taxes?

Theodoric the Great. His order survives: it sent trusted inspectors to look over the ruined fields so that each farmer's relief would match the damage actually done.

The pumice lapilli that rained on Pompeii for hours killed many people sheltering indoors by doing what?

Collapsing roofs. Lapilli is Latin for 'little stones', and each piece was light, but they piled up metres deep until their weight brought the roofs down on those who had stayed inside.

What distinction does Vesuvius hold among volcanoes on the European mainland?

Only one to erupt in the last 100 years. Europe's busier volcanoes all stand on islands, so on the mainland Vesuvius has had no rival in living memory.

The historian Cassius Dio wrote that, before the AD 79 eruption, crowds of which beings were seen roaming Vesuvius?

Giants. Legend told of a race of giants once defeated on the fiery plains nearby, so when the mountain roared some thought, Dio says, that they were rising again in revolt.