Mount Etna
active stratovolcano on the east coast of Sicily, Italy
Mount Etna, or simply Etna, is an active stratovolcano on the east coast of Sicily, Italy, in the Metropolitan City of Catania, between the cities of Messina and Catania. It is located above the convergent plate margin between the African Plate and the Eurasian Plate. It is one of the tallest active volcanoes in Europe, and the tallest peak in Italy south of the Alps with a current height (September 2024) of 3,403 m (11,165 ft), though this varies with summit eruptions. For instance, in 2021 the southeastern crater reached a height of 3,357 m (11,014 ft), but was then surpassed by the Voragine crater after the summer 2024 eruptions.
Etna covers an area of 1,190 km2 (459 sq mi) with a basal circumference of 140 km (87 miles). This makes it by far the largest of the four active volcanoes in Italy, being about two and a half times the height of the next largest, Mount Vesuvius. Only Mount Teide on Tenerife in the Canary Islands surpasses it in the whole of the European–North-African region west of the Black Sea.
Mount Etna is one of the world's most active volcanoes and is in an almost constant state of activity. The fertile volcanic soils produced from this activity support extensive agriculture, with vineyards and orchards spread across the lower slopes of the mountain and the broad Plain of Catania to the south. Due to its history of recent activity and nearby population, Mount Etna has been designated a Decade Volcano by the United Nations.
The public source identifies “Mount Etna” as active stratovolcano on the east coast of Sicily, Italy. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Mount, Etna and active.
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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 Sep 4, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q16990. VIAF identifies the subject as 18144647638815926529. The Library of Congress control number is sh85045454. Authority coordinates are 37.751, 14.993. 2 of 6 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2024 and 2021.
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This entry incorporates text from “Mount Etna” 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.