Mount Vesuvius Trivia
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57 free Mount Vesuvius trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Mount Vesuvius trivia starts, inevitably, with AD 79: the 33-kilometre column of ash, the pumice raining on Pompeii, the surges that cooked Herculaneum, and a fat Roman admiral who sailed towards the disaster saying fortune favours the brave. But the volcano has erupted dozens of times since, buried villages in 1631, wrecked a squadron of American bombers in 1944, and today sits nine kilometres from Naples with 600,000 people in its official red zone. This quiz covers the whole story: the mythology (a serpent on household shrines, a mountain devoted to Hercules), the geology (an African plate diving under Europe, a somma caldera around a newer cone), the two Plinys and their letters to Tacitus, the argument over whether the eruption happened in August or October, the casts and the arched vaults, the tax break Theodoric gave survivors of 512, the eruption that moved the 1908 Olympics to London, the funicular that gave the world 'Funiculì, Funiculà', and the seven-day evacuation plan. Easy questions suit anyone who has heard of Pompeii; the expert tier is for people who know how many Holocene eruptions the Smithsonian counts. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on Vesuvius and the eruption of AD 79, and the supporting sentence is attached to each question.
30 of 57 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Vesuvius stands on the shore of which body of water?
The Gulf of Naples
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.
Q 02Vesuvius is in which region of Italy?
Campania
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.
Q 03What type of volcano is Vesuvius?
A stratovolcano
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.
Q 04The steep rim partly encircling Vesuvius's cone is the remnant of which older, much higher structure?
Mount Somma
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'.
Q 05The wine grown on Vesuvius's volcanic slopes is named after the tears of which figure?
Jesus Christ
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.
Q 06The only surviving eyewitness account of the AD 79 eruption is two letters written to which historian?
Tacitus
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.
Q 07Which rebel leader camped on Vesuvius in 73 BC and escaped a Roman siege on ropes of wild vines?
Spartacus
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.
Q 08What post did Pliny the Elder hold at Misenum when the eruption began?
Commander of the Roman fleet
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.
Q 09Advised by his helmsman to turn back from the falling cinders, what did Pliny the Elder reply?
'Fortune favours the brave'
'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.
Q 10Fleeing a building filling with tephra, Pliny the Elder's party protected their heads with what?
Pillows
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.
Q 11Pliny the Elder died at which town, one of those buried by the eruption?
Stabiae
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.
Q 12Pliny the Elder's nephew blamed sulphurous fumes for his death, but what have some modern writers suggested instead?
A stroke or heart attack
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.
Q 13The AD 79 eruption column rose some 30 km, reaching which layer of the atmosphere?
The stratosphere
Q 21Which 2018 find at Pompeii suggested the eruption came weeks after the traditional 24 August?
A charcoal graffito
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.
Q 22Pliny the Elder, who died in the AD 79 eruption, is best remembered as the author of which 37-book work?
Natural History
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.
Q 23Which emperor had been reigning for only a few months when Vesuvius erupted in AD 79?
Titus
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.
Q 14The eyewitness to the AD 79 eruption likened its cloud to which tree?
A pine
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.
Q 15Vesuvius's AD 79 eruption is classed as 'Plinian'; which American volcano erupted in the same way in the 20th century?
Mount St. Helens
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.
Q 16Pompeii was still repairing damage from a great earthquake that struck during the reign of which emperor?
Nero
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.
Q 17Herculaneum, buried far deeper than Pompeii, preserved a Roman villa's whole library of what?
Papyrus scrolls
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.
Q 18The shapes of Pompeii's victims were recovered by pouring what into hollows in the ash?
Plaster
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.
Q 19Excavations in the 1980s found many victims of the eruption huddled where at Herculaneum?
In arched vaults by the old shore
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.
Q 20Which Game of Thrones star played a gladiator caught in Vesuvius's eruption in the 2014 film Pompeii?
Kit Harington
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.
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.
Q 24In 472, ash from Vesuvius fell on which distant city, more than 1,200 km away?
Constantinople
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.
Q 25As Vesuvius erupted in 1631, which saint's relics were carried in procession to halt it?
San Gennaro
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.
Q 26After Italy blamed Vesuvius's 1906 eruption for giving up the 1908 Olympics, which city hosted them instead of Rome?
London
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.
Q 27Vesuvius last erupted during which war?
World War II
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.
Q 28Which British band's 2013 hit 'Pompeii' imagines a conversation between two victims of Vesuvius's eruption?
Bastille
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.
Q 29Herculaneum is said to have been rediscovered in the early 1700s when workers digging what struck its buried theatre?
A well
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.
Q 30Mark Twain described climbing Vesuvius in which travel book?
The Innocents Abroad
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.