Six volcanoes. Two of them show fire almost daily, one buried the most famous ruined city in the world – and all six carry an official alert level we fetch every morning.
Photo: gnuckx · CC BY 2.0
Italy runs the densest volcano monitoring in Europe: INGV measures, the civil protection department in Rome sets the alert level, and in Sicily the regional civil protection adds an alert phase that governs access to Etna. We read all of them automatically at six every morning – and link each volcano to the page that explains what the level means for your visit.
Official alert levels, fetched automatically every morning – checked by hand where the authority offers no data feed · as of 2026-09-25 · How we check
The south is the part of Italy where the ground actually burns. Etna is Europe's highest and most active volcano, with a cable car and 4x4 buses up to 3,000 m (9,800 ft). Stromboli, off the north coast, throws glowing rock every ten to twenty minutes – and has done so for at least two thousand years. And Vulcano, the island that gave every volcano its name, has a crater you can walk into without a guide.
Mount EtnaCable car to 2,500 m, 4x4 bus to 3,000 m, the glow after dark. What the alert phase means for your day.
StromboliFire every 10 to 20 minutes. 290 m without a guide, 400 m with one – and the view of the Sciara del Fuoco.
VulcanoThe Gran Cratere is open again: no guide, no ticket, but only in fixed time windows.
Aeolian IslandsWhich of the seven islands suits whom, crossing times from Milazzo, landing tax.
Mount Etna toursSunset, 3,000 m, summit trek, wine – which one fits.Two volcanoes sit on the Bay of Naples, and they could not be more different. Vesuvius is the mountain everyone knows: a cone with a crater trail, a ticket and a time slot, silent since 1944. The Campi Flegrei west of the city are not a mountain but a caldera of 200 square kilometers (77 square miles) with the town of Pozzuoli inside it – the ground is rising, it shakes, and the word supervolcano makes the rounds. In between: Pompeii and Herculaneum, the cities Vesuvius buried in AD 79.
Mount VesuviusThe step up to the crater rim. Tickets online only, by time slot, no ticket office on the mountain.
Campi FlegreiAlert level yellow, Solfatara closed, Baia and Cuma open – and the ground that keeps rising.
PompeiiDaily cap of 20,000, named tickets, €20. When to arrive so you actually get in.
HerculaneumSmaller than Pompeii, better preserved, no daily cap. €16.
All day trips from NaplesVesuvius, Pompeii and Herculaneum on one rail line – what fits into a single day.
Pompeii ticketsExpress, Pompeii+, 3-day ticket: which one you need and how the daily cap works.
Pompeii toursGuided at the gate, from Naples, Sorrento or Rome.Six volcanoes, six different experiences. The question is not which is best, but what you want to see.
Stromboli. The only volcano in Europe where that can be planned: explosions every 10 to 20 minutes, for millennia. From the viewpoint at 290 m (950 ft) without a guide, at 400 m (1,300 ft) with one. Second choice: Etna in the evening when it is active – the glow above the summit craters is visible from the southern slopes, but the mountain decides.
Vesuvius: 300 m (1,000 ft) above the pit after a short, steep trail – with a ticket and time slot. Vulcano: down into the Gran Cratere among yellow fumaroles, no guide, fixed hours only. On Etna the summit craters are currently closed; you still see the 2002 craters and the Silvestri craters.
Etna with its cable car and the Silvestri craters right by the parking lot, Vesuvius with its short crater trail, Herculaneum instead of Pompeii because it is smaller and easier to take in. Stromboli at night is an experience for older children, but the climb to 400 m with a guide is a real mountain hike.
Pompeii and Herculaneum show what an eruption does to two cities – Pompeii in breadth, Herculaneum in depth, with wood, cloth and upper floors intact. The Campi Flegrei show what a volcano does to a living town: columns bored by marine mollusks, an evacuated old quarter, houses with cracks.
| Etna – cable car to 2,500 m · 3,000 m tour with bus and guide | €54 · €82 |
| Stromboli – viewpoint at 290 m · climb to 400 m with guide | free · tour |
| Vulcano – Gran Cratere, fixed time windows only | free |
| Vesuvius – crater trail, online only, by time slot | €11.68 |
| Campi Flegrei – per site · 3-day combined ticket | €5 · €10 |
| Pompeii – Express · Herculaneum | €20 · €16 |
Photo: Unukorno · CC BY 3.0
In volcanology, “active” only means: has erupted in historical times and can do so again. Between a Stromboli that explodes every quarter of an hour and a Vesuvius that has been silent since 1944 lie worlds – and both count as active.
Stromboli and Etna. Stromboli has been erupting continuously since antiquity; Etna erupts almost every year – in 2026 a flank eruption in summer and ash plumes in September. Both can still be visited, because the authorities tie access to the volcano's state: exclusion zones, altitude limits, mandatory guides.
Vesuvius: last eruption 1944, quiet since – with hundreds of thousands of people in the red zone and an evacuation plan. Vulcano: last eruption 1888 to 1890; from 2021 gas levels rose so much that the crater was closed for years. Campi Flegrei: last eruption 1538, but the ground has been rising since 2005, and in 2026 a magnitude 4.7 quake struck.
INGV, with its observatories in Catania and Naples, measures around the clock. The national civil protection department sets the alert level from green to red. In Sicily the regional civil protection sets the alert phase, and mayors turn it into closure orders. We read all three levels daily – how we check.
Two regions, two trips. Sicily and the Aeolian Islands are a week; the Bay of Naples is three days. Doing both in one go works by train: Naples to Catania is a long day, with the train riding a ferry across the Strait of Messina.
From Catania to Etna: one day for the cable car and the 3,000 m tour, one evening for the glow. Then to Milazzo and by ferry to the Aeolian Islands: Stromboli for the night by the fire, Vulcano for the crater, Lipari as a base. Ferries run year-round, more often in summer.
Day one Vesuvius and Pompeii, in that order and with time slots booked ahead. Day two Herculaneum and Naples. Day three the Campi Flegrei: the amphitheater, Baia, Monte Nuovo – all reachable by the Cumana railway or the metro from Naples. All day plans are on the Naples page.
May, June, September and October: no more snow on Etna, mild nights on Stromboli, under 30 °C (86 °F) in Pompeii. In high summer Pompeii and Vesuvius are crowded and hot, but ferries to the islands run most often. In winter the Etna cable car keeps running, with a snowcat above it; Stromboli climbs depend on the weather.
About ten, depending on how you count: Etna, Stromboli, Vulcano, Vesuvius, Campi Flegrei and Ischia are the well-known ones on land, plus Pantelleria, Lipari and several submarine volcanoes in the Tyrrhenian Sea and the Strait of Sicily. Only two erupt regularly: Etna and Stromboli.
Etna, by volume: it erupts almost every year, in 2026 with a flank eruption in summer. Stromboli is the most persistent – small explosions every 10 to 20 minutes for at least two millennia.
Vesuvius (crater trail with a ticket), Vulcano (into the crater, no guide, fixed hours), Stromboli (to 400 m, guide only), Etna (cable car and 4x4 bus to 3,000 m; summit craters only with a guide and only in the Attenzione phase). The Campi Flegrei have no summit, but Monte Nuovo has a loop trail.
In the areas that are open, yes. Italy closes consistently: Etna by alert phase, Stromboli by activity, Vulcano by gas readings, the Campi Flegrei by earthquakes. Today's alert levels are at the top of this page; what they mean for a visit is on each volcano's page.
Etna is the volcano, Vesuvius is the excursion. On Etna you spend a day in a lava landscape at 3,000 m, with a chance of seeing the glow in the evening. Vesuvius takes two hours, but gives you the look into the crater and Pompeii next door. If you only go once: Etna for the volcano, Vesuvius for the combination with the buried cities.
Sources · accessed on 2026-09-25
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