Mount Vesuvius - Italy

Some 9 miles south-east of the city of Naples, in Campania, Mount Vesuvius rises 4190ft above the Bay of Naples. It is the only active volcano on mainland Europe and consist of a crater 4593ft in circumference and 709ft deep. The remains of the original volcano, known as Monte Summa, form a semicircular ridge around the existing younger cone. Vesuvius's most famous eruption,and the first to be recorded (by Pliny the Elder), occurred in AD79, when volcanic debris overwhelmed the cities of Pompeii, Stabiae and Herculaneum. The most recent eruption was in 1944.