Etna Park
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How it came to be
Mount Etna, on the east coast of Sicily, is the highest Mediterranean island mountain and the most active stratovolcano in the world. Its eruptive history can be traced back 500,000 years, and at least 2,700 years of activity have been documented. The inscribed property covers 19,237 uninhabited hectares on the highest part of the mountain.
Recorded eruptions have shaped life around it since antiquity. An eruption in 396 BCE reportedly stopped a Carthaginian advance on Syracuse, and a violent eruption in 122 BCE collapsed many roofs in Catania, after which Rome exempted the town from taxes for ten years. The eruption that began on 11 March 1669 destroyed at least 10 villages on the southern flank and reached the walls of Catania on 15 April, filling its harbour with lava.
In 1928 a lava flow destroyed the town of Mascali, which was rebuilt on a new site. The Etna Regional Nature Park was established by decree of the President of the Sicilian Region in March 1987, and the park's core zone is the World Heritage property. Its almost continuous activity makes it a natural laboratory for volcanology and geophysics, and it was inscribed in 2013.
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