Etna

Etna rises on the eastern coast of Sicily and is the highest active volcano in Europe and the highest island mountain in the Mediterranean, at some 3,400 metres, a figure that varies with the activity of its summit craters. It is a stratovolcano between 350,000 and 500,000 years old, in virtually permanent eruption, and its eruptive history has been documented continuously for more than two millennia, the longest such series in the world for any volcano, which has made it a benchmark laboratory for volcanology.

The Parco dell'Etna was created as a regional nature park by decree of the President of the Sicilian Region in May 1987 and is organised into four zones: strict reserve, general reserve, protection area and controlled area. The mountain displays a complete vegetation zonation, from the Mediterranean belt of the cultivated lower slopes — vineyards, olive groves and citrus on very fertile volcanic soils — to forests of chestnut, oak, Corsican pine and beech, and above them the deserts of lava and ash where only pioneer plants such as Astragalus siculus, endemic to the volcano, survive.

On 21 June 2013 UNESCO inscribed Mount Etna on the World Heritage List under criterion (viii), the geological one. The property comprises 19,237 uninhabited hectares of the upper part of the volcano, with a buffer zone of a further 26,220, and coincides only with the strict reserve zone of the regional park, not with its whole perimeter. Following a land acquisition process completed in 2010, 97.4% of the property's area is in public ownership. Nine Natura 2000 sites overlap with it and give additional cover to 77% of the area.