Vesuvius

Vesuvius National Park was created in 1995 and protects the volcanic edifice that dominates the Bay of Naples, one of the most studied and most dangerous volcanoes in the world because of the density of population living at its foot. Its structure is twofold: the present Great Cone, active, set within the semicircle of Monte Somma, the remains of a far larger earlier edifice that collapsed in the eruption of AD 79, the one that buried Pompeii, Herculaneum and Stabiae.

That eruption, described by Pliny the Younger, gave its name to the Plinian eruptive style and made Vesuvius the volcano with the greatest weight in European cultural history. It has erupted dozens of times since, most recently in 1944, during the Allied occupation. Today it is dormant, under permanent watch by the Vesuvius Observatory, the oldest in the world, founded in 1841.

The park's natural interest is high and often eclipsed by the archaeological. The volcanic soils support a very diverse flora, with more than six hundred plant species and pioneer communities colonising the recent lava flows, among them lichens specific to these substrates, as well as planted pine woods, chestnut groves and Mediterranean scrub. The contrast between the Somma slope, wetter and more wooded, and that of the cone, arid and covered in lapilli, organises the vegetation of the whole. In 1997 UNESCO recognised the Somma-Vesuvio e Miglio d'Oro biosphere reserve.