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Aetna from the Roman Amphitheatre in Taormina
Aetna from the Roman Amphitheatre in Taormina

Mount Aetna — Sicily

Sicily's legendary volcano — images from a 2018 visit

Mt Aetna is the largest active volcano in Europe: an immemorial feature of mythic and historical tales. There are geological records of its activity for the past half-million years, and human records that date to the oldest tales in Western culture — the Homeric epics of the 8th century BCE.

Still today, during a comparatively quiet volcanic era, it is an impressive and even threatening presence on the Sicilian east coast, facing Italy.

This PDF booklet contains a small group of images I made during a 2018 trip to Sicily, linked to a few items about the mountain's mythic history.

Pages from the Mount Aetna photo-book