16,000 years ago: the Green Pumice (Pomici Verdoline) eruption, VEI 5. All of this is intended to track magma rising underneath the volcano. The subduction plate under Mount Vesuvius has a part that has torn away. Around 5,000 years ago: two explosive eruptions smaller than the Avellino eruption. [12] The historian Diodorus Siculus relates a tradition that Hercules, in the performance of his labors, passed through the country of nearby Cumae on his way to Sicily and found there a place called "the Phlegraean Plain" (Φλεγραῖον πεδίον, "plain of fire"), "from a hill which anciently vomited out fire ... now called Vesuvius. Still higher, on the slopes of the great cone and on the inner slope of Mount Somma, the surface is almost barren; during quiescent periods it is covered by tufts of meadow plants. As gas-rich magma approaches the surface during an eruption, the huge drop in internal pressure caused by the reduction in weight of the overlying rock (which drops to zero at the surface) causes the gases to come out of solution, the volume of gas increasing explosively from nothing to perhaps many times that of the accompanying magma. [44] The deaths of 600 sheep from "tainted air" in the vicinity of Pompeii indicates that the earthquake of AD 62 may have been related to new activity by Vesuvius. Also know, what type of volcano is Mount Vesuvius? Even the inside of the crater was moderately filled with shrubbery. The explosions of 512 were so severe that Theodoric the Goth released the people living on the slopes of Vesuvius from payment of taxes. Similarly, what if Mount Vesuvius erupted today? The lava … It is likely that most, or all, of the known victims in this town were killed by the surges. As the ship was preparing to leave the area, a messenger came from his friend Rectina (wife of Tascius[57]) living on the coast near the foot of the volcano explaining that her party could only get away by sea and asking for rescue. It is one of several volcanoes which form the Campanian volcanic arc. [19] The Gran Cono was produced during the A.D. 79 eruption. In 1944, after a long period of dormancy, Italy's Mount Vesuvius erupted, causing great destruction. Vesuvius is a complex volcano. The volcano was then quiet (for 295 years, if the 217 BC date for the last previous eruption is true) and was described by, It erupted again in 203, during the lifetime of the historian, In 472, it ejected such a volume of ash that ashfalls were reported as far away as, The eruptions of 512 were so severe that those inhabiting the slopes of Vesuvius were granted exemption from taxes by, Further eruptions were recorded in 787, 968, 991, 999, 1007 and 1036 with the first recorded, Vesuvius entered a new phase in December 1631, when a major eruption buried many villages under lava flows, killing around 3,000 people. Between the years 79 and 1037, several eruptions were reported, which include those occurring in 203, 472, 512, 685, 787, 968, 991, 999, and 1007. Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions. People as far away as Misenum fled for their lives. The volcano is one of several which form the Campanian volcanic arc. These layers are known as strata. In some ways, Mount Vesuvius and its eruption were much welcomed by the Allies, as it was one of the few things some of them were able to tell their families about. the eruption in 1631 displaying a complete stratigraphic and petrographic description: phonolite was firstly erupted, followed by a tephritic phonolite and finally a phonolitic tephrite). Vesuvius probably originated somewhat less than 200,000 years ago. Others include Campi Flegrei, a large caldera a few kilometers to the north west, Mount Epomeo, 20 kilometres (12 mi) to the west on the island of Ischia, and several undersea volcanoes to the south. Mt. Magma sitting in an underground chamber for many years will start to see higher melting point constituents such as olivine crystallizing out. The cloud obscured Point Misenum near at hand and the island of Capraia (Capri) across the bay. [citation needed]. The area around Vesuvius was officially declared a national park on 5 June 1995. [50] This period would have been the last opportunity to escape. [52], The only surviving eyewitness account of the event consists of two letters by Pliny the Younger to the historian Tacitus. Each eruption adds a new layer to the sides of the volcano. Fearing for their lives, the population began to call to each other and move back from the coast along the road. In March 1944, the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) 340th Bombardment Group was based at Pompeii Airfield near Terzigno, Italy, just a few kilometres from the eastern base of the volcano. It runs the length of the Italian peninsula along with Mount Etna and Stromboli. Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to exclusive content. His nephew attempted to resume a normal life, but that night a tremor awoke him and his mother, prompting them to abandon the house for the courtyard. The last time Vesuvius activated was in 1944, causing minor damage and killing 26 people. Its mountainous height is formed from composite layers of lava flow, ash, and cinders from millenniums of eruptions. Subsequently, one may also ask, what is the composition of Mt Vesuvius? "Funiculì, Funiculà", a Neapolitan language song with lyrics by journalist Peppino Turco set to music by composer Luigi Denza, commemorates its opening. Vesuvius erupted catastrophically in 79 A.D., burying the towns of Herculaneum and Pompeii. The Evidence for and against August 24", "Pompeii: Vesuvius eruption may have been later than thought", "Visiting Pompeii – AD 79 – Vesuvius explodes", "Lecture 19: Greek, Carthaginian and Roman Agricultural Writers", "The eruption of Vesuvius of 79 AD and its impact on human environment in Pompei", "Pompeii, Stories from an eruption: Herculaneum", Vesuvius Causes Terror; Loud Detonations and Frequent Earthquakes, Vesuvius Threatens Destruction Of Towns; Bosco Trecase Abandoned, "Mount Vesuvius: 2000 years of volcanological observations", "The Mount Vesuvius Eruption of March 1944", "Melvin C. Shaffer World War II Photographs", "Activity of Vesuvio between 1631 and 1799", "Italians trying to prevent a modern Pompeii", "Italy ready to pay to clear slopes of volcano", Second International Conference on Early Warning (EWCII), "Influences of urban fabric on pyroclastic density currents at Pompeii (Italy): Part II: temperature of the deposits and hazard implications", "Vesuvius: The making of a catastrophe: Il problema ignorato", Smithsonian Institution's Global Volcanism Program (GVP) (entry for Aira / Sakurajima), Conservation issues of Pompeii and Herculaneum, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Mount_Vesuvius&oldid=1018696653, Wikipedia pages semi-protected against vandalism, Wikipedia indefinitely move-protected pages, Short description is different from Wikidata, Articles containing Italian-language text, Articles containing Neapolitan-language text, Pages using infobox mountain with deprecated parameters, Articles containing Ancient Greek (to 1453)-language text, Articles with unsourced statements from September 2019, Articles with unsourced statements from February 2020, Wikipedia articles with WORLDCATID identifiers, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, 25,000 years before present to 1944; Due to the close proximity of such a large population, it is widely considered to be the most dangerous volcano on the planet. Today, it is regarded as one of the most dangerous volcanoes in the world because of the population of 3,000,000 people living near enough to be affected by an eruption, with 600,000 in the danger zone, making it the most densely populated volcanic region in the world, as well as its tendency towards violently explosive eruptions, which are now known as Plinian eruptions. Many scholars since then have offered an etymology. Surges 3 and 4 are believed by the authors to have buried Pompeii. One of the nephew's letters relates what he could discover from witnesses of his uncle's experiences. Reconstructions of the eruption and its effects vary considerably in the details but have the same overall features. In the middle of the day an explosion threw up a high-altitude column from which ash and pumice began to fall, blanketing the area. Because magma is less dense than the solid rock around it, it was pushed upward. Advised by the helmsman to turn back, he stated "Fortune favors the brave" and ordered him to continue on to Stabiae (about 4.5 kilometers from Pompeii). From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Of the many eruptions of Mount Vesuvius, a major stratovolcano in southern Italy, the most famous is its eruption in 79 AD, which was one of … It can be explosive like its most famous eruption in August 24, 79 A.D. which caused ashfalls, volcanic impact, and mudflows onto Pompeii and Herculaneum, or nonexplosive like in May 1, 1855 which a lava flow invades Massa and San Sebastiano. Vesuvius is an Italian volcano that erupted on August 24, 79 CE*, blanketing the towns and 1000s of residents of Pompeii, Stabiae, and Herculaneum. The soil is very fertile, and in the long period of inactivity before the eruption of 1631 there were forests in the crater and three lakes from which pasturing herds drank. [42], The volcano ejected a cloud of stones, ashes and volcanic gases to a height of 33 km (21 mi), spewing molten rock and pulverized pumice at the rate of 6×105 cubic metres (7.8×105 cu yd) per second, ultimately releasing 100,000 times the thermal energy released by the Hiroshima-Nagasaki bombings. It consists of a volcanic cone, called Gran Cono, that was built inside a summit caldera, called Mount Somma. [27] On occasion, eruptions from Vesuvius have been so large that the whole of southern Europe has been blanketed by ash; in 472 and 1631, Vesuvian ash fell on Constantinople (Istanbul), over 1,200 kilometres (750 mi) away. [76] The summit of Vesuvius is open to visitors and there is a small network of paths around the volcano that are maintained by the park authorities on weekends. The rocks at Vesuvius are called tephrite. Because of prevailing winds, towns and cities to the south and east of the volcano are most at risk from this, and it is assumed that tephra accumulation exceeding 100 kilograms per square metre (20 lb/sq ft)—at which point people are at risk from collapsing roofs—may extend out as far as Avellino to the east or Salerno to the south-east. It was considered a divinity of the Genius type at the time of the eruption of AD 79: it appears under the inscribed name Vesuvius as a serpent in the decorative frescos of many lararia, or household shrines, surviving from Pompeii. There have been no eruptions since 1944, and none of the eruptions after AD 79 were as large or destructive as the Pompeian one. With the assistance of the gods he pacified the region and went on. However, Stabiae was 16 km from the vent (roughly where the modern town of Castellammare di Stabia is situated) and his companions were apparently unaffected by the volcanic gases, and so it is more likely that the corpulent Pliny died from some other cause, such as a stroke or heart attack. The eruption alternated between Plinian and Peléan six times. Mt. People caught on the former seashore by the first surge died of thermal shock. The original plan considered the response to a worst-case scenario, taken to be a subplinian eruption on the scale of … Vesuvius was then built up by a series of lava flows, with some smaller explosive eruptions interspersed between them. Sub-Plinian eruptions producing about 0.1 cubic kilometres (0.024 cu mi), such as those of 472 and 1631, have been more frequent with a few hundred years between them. Another study used the magnetic characteristics of over 200 samples of roof-tile and plaster fragments collected around Pompeii to estimate equilibrium temperature of the pyroclastic flow. In 73 bce the gladiator Spartacus was besieged by the praetor Gaius Claudius Glaber on the barren summit of Mount Somma, which was then a wide, flat depression walled by rugged rocks festooned with wild vines. Mount Vesuvius is a composite volcano because its eruptions vary often from pyroclastic material to lava flows. That eruptive period ended in the major eruption of March 1944, which destroyed the villages of, This page was last edited on 19 April 2021, at 11:20. Vesuvius consists of a large cone partially encircled by the steep rim of a summit caldera caused by the collapse of an earlier and originally much higher structure. Later that same day the pumice and ash stopped falling and the sun shone weakly through the cloud, encouraging Pliny and his mother to return to their home and wait for news of Pliny the Elder. The Oscans, an Italic people, lived in the countryside. An inscription from Capua[10] to IOVI VESVVIO indicates that he was worshipped as a power of Jupiter; that is, Jupiter Vesuvius. According to Peter Francis (p. 351) a complex volcano is "an extensive assemblage of spatially, temporally, and genetically related major and minor [volcanic] centers with their associated lava flows and pyroclastic flows." From the 1631 eruption until 1944, there was a comparatively small eruption every few years, emitting 0.001–0.01 km³ of magma. Vesuvius is located on the West coast of Italy and is known for some of the most famous volcanic explosions in European history. The lowest temperatures were in rooms under collapsed roofs. Let us know if you have suggestions to improve this article (requires login). 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