Two of the area's most iconic locales – Mount Vesuvius and Pompeii – can be found roughly 15 miles away from central Naples. Mount Vesuvius is the only active volcano left on Europe's mainland ...

Pompeii's history reads like a Greek tragedy. Settlers originally flocked to the site of the Roman port city because of its fertile soil—the product of volcanic ash from nearby Mount Vesuvius.

When Vesuvius erupted on August 24 and 25, A.D. 79, some 2,600 inhabitants perished in Pompeii alone (a plaster ... The eruption of Mount Vesuvius loosed a deadly pyroclastic surge on the wealthy ...

to Pompeii and Herculaneum, victims of the geophysical power momentarily contained beneath your feet. After an enormous sub-plinian eruption in 1631, Vesuvius has adopted a more benign personality.

That’s what happened almost 2000 years ago in Italy, when Mount Vesuvius erupted in the year 79AD. But the cloud of hot ash that buried Pompeii, instantly destroying it, also preserved the city ...