Piton de la Fournaise
Volcano in Reunion
Piton de la Fournaise (French: [pitɔ̃ də la fuʁnɛz]; 'Peak of the Furnace') is a shield volcano on the eastern side of Réunion island, a French overseas department and region, in the Indian Ocean. It is currently one of the most active volcanoes in the world, along with Kīlauea in the Hawaiian Islands, Stromboli and Etna in Italy and Mount Erebus in Antarctica. The volcano is located within Réunion National Park, a World Heritage Site.
Residents of Réunion sometimes refer to Piton de la Fournaise simply as le Volcan ("the Volcano"). It is a major tourist attraction.
Geology
The uppermost section of the volcano is occupied by the Enclos Fouqué, a caldera 8 kilometres (5.0 mi) wide. High cliffs, known as remparts in French, form the caldera's rim. The caldera is breached to the southeast towards the sea. The eastern flank of the volcano is unstable and is in the initial stages of failure. It will eventually collapse into the Indian Ocean, possibly causing a megatsunami in the event of a cataclysmic debris flow.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Piton de la Fournaise” is volcano in Reunion. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Piton, Fournaise and Volcano, not as a finished interpretation.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 16, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1049644. VIAF identifies the subject as 170186947. The Library of Congress control number is sh90001343. Authority coordinates are -21.243, 55.707. 1 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank.
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This entry incorporates text from “Piton de la Fournaise” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.