It is impossible to speak of one without speaking of the other: Catania, Sicily’s second largest city with a metro population around a million, and Etna – called Mama Etna by the locals – the mighty volcano towering over it. For as long as there have been humans present in eastern Sicily, Mt. Etna has had her say on life here. It is a constant cycle of destruction and rebirth, of reverence and fear, of consequences of life in the shadow of a volcano that are both negative and positive.
Mt. Etna is relatively young as far as volcanoes go, first becoming active around 500,000 years ago. Here, the African plate of which Sicily is part, is subducting (moving underneath) the Eurasian plate, leading to mountainous growth up the spine of Italy’s Appenine Mountains, with Sicily at their southern end. The result is an area highly tectonically active, with frequent earthquakes and a few famous volcanoes, like Vesuvius (of Pompeii fame) and Etna.
Etna has been pretty much continuously active since its formation, with a chronicle of eruptions dating back to Greek times. Those have continued to modern days, even as recently as this year. Most of these are relatively minor and pose no danger to humans living in the area. Others? Not so much.
Eruptions have destroyed portions of Catania as recently as 1669, and destroyed other nearby villages and attractions even in this century, 2002 being a prime example. And while I am assured that most towns living in Etna’s shadow are considered “safe,” with a less than 1% chance of encountering a lava flow, the possibility is still present. After all, only some of the volcano’s eruptions spew from its four summit craters down predictable paths. Others have burst out of side fissures, creating their own “one-time” craters, and leaving much less time for evacuations. Hence, Mt. Etna is one of the most heavily monitored volcanoes in the world.
But for all of their destructive power, Mt. Etna and her frequent eruptions also bring life to the area. The soil here is among the most fertile anywhere due to volcanic nutrients being consistently replenished. (Perhaps this is why Sicily has always been one of the more important agricultural producers in Western Europe, so much so that it provided the majority of grain for the Western Roman Empire.) Likewise, the resultant basalt – dried lava – has quite literally built Catania and the nearby cities and towns.
A walk down Via Etnea, a long street running roughly north to south through Catania’s old city (not quite, and the unintentional two degree curve to the long road means Etna itself isn’t visible most of the time), will illustrate just how pervasive basalt is here. The sidewalks are basalt. The cobblestones are basalt. Most of the buildings are basalt, though some are finished with a thin veneer of limestone since apparently churches shouldn’t be black.
Even in Roman times, basalt was the building material of choice due to its availability. The Roman amphitheatre, about 85% of which is still buried beneath the city, shows both the utilization – and the lasting duration – of basalt construction.
It should also be noted that much of the area in the center was once Catania’s harbor, but was filled up by the 1669 eruption, which skirted the city’s walls into the sea. The arched rise that now holds railroad tracks was once seaside storehouses and docks. Mt. Etna taketh away, but she also giveth.
A visit to the mountain itself is hugely popular with tourists, and for good reason. The drive from Catania to Etna (where it actually feels like the mountain; Catania itself is technically built on what is part of Etna, though it doesn’t feel so) is about an hour, winding its way through cute towns and plentiful vineyards. (The Etna area is known for its red wines.) Along the way, vineyards give way to forests of chestnut, birch, and pine, depending on altitude and conditions.
Of course, the remnants of lava flows are everywhere. My guide tells me it takes about thirty years for greenery to start emerging through the ash and rock remnants of eruptions past, but it likely takes a century for it to truly reforest in a meaningful way. So there are long scars, rivers of dried lava in the form of basalt, snaking their way down the mountainside, black in contrast to the greenery leaving a strong impression.
A number of hikes are available on the mountain, but it seems most guides bring their wards to a series of cinder cones between the main summit and the Straits of Messina. Here, it is a fairly easy walk/hike to reach the top of one of these mini-mountains for a view up to the probably-too-active-to-allow-tourists summit. As a result, it can be a bit crowded, but not overwhelmingly so.
Even today, on my visit, Mama Etna is active. Smoke puffs out throughout the day, obscuring the summit at times. There is no danger of an eruption, according to the authorities monitoring, but crossing dried lava fields makes it apparent that things could change. (They don’t, at least not while I’m there.)
The power and majesty of Mt. Etna is obvious, both from within Catania and from the mountain itself. The 11,000 foot creator and destroyer dominates the skyline, and her remnants power the city to this day.
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