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Recent
eruptions of Mt. Vesuvius
Well, is
it time? With all the pompous weight of scientific
certainty, I can now say…uh, maybe. It is instructive
to look at the recent history of eruptions for a clue.
“Recent” is relative. We can take the last 400 years
or so because in geologic terms that is but a
heart-beat. Working back from
the present, the last eruption of Vesuvius was in
March, 1944. It happened in full view of the Allied
armies, which had taken the city of Naples a few
months earlier. WWII was still raging farther north in
Italy when Vesuvius went into what is called an
“effusive” eruption (less violent than an “explosive”
eruption, but nevertheless dangerous and potentially
deadly). That eruption destroyed a number of nearby
towns and a U.S. B-25 bomber group parked at the
Capodichino airport in Naples. (The volcanic ash
rendered the planes useless.) There are still a lot of
people in Naples who remember that one, including at
least one U.S. Army captain (still in Naples!), Herman
Chanowitz, whose wartime
memoirs are chronicled elsewhere in this
encyclopedia. Mt.
Vesuvius, 1944 eruption. Photo: H. Chanowitz.
Photo restoration: Tana A. Churan-Davis.
The eruption of
April, 1906, was massive and attracted worldwide
attention. (Indeed,
for an unusual aside to the 1906 eruption, see The
Wonderful Wizard of Chittenango.) It killed 100 persons
and buried nearby towns. The initial rumblings,
however, caused little alarm and locals joked that
“the mountain” was just preparing a royal welcome for
British King Edward, due in Naples for a visit
shortly. He made it just in time for an eruption that
dropped the ridge on the main cone some 250 meters,
according to Prof.
Raffaele Vittorio Matteucci, the director of
the Vesuvius observatory. The eruption covered the
city of Naples, itself, with ash, and made the roads
near the volcano impassable. Residents of destroyed
villages fled to Naples or to nearby towns such as Castellammare. The eruption
was followed by heavy rains that produced what
geologists now call a lahar (an
Indonesian word)—massive mud-like slides of ash and
water that buried everything in their path. The
eruption created a heroic mythology around the persons
of Matteucci and his US American associate, Frank A. Perret,
who stuck to their stations in the observatory to
gather data while hell raged around them. (Some
sources reported at the time that it was the most
massive eruption since the great explosion that
destroyed Pompeii and Herculaneum
in 79 AD. That may be an exaggeration, since the 1872
and the 1631 eruptions were likely to have been at
least as powerful.) Matteucci’s presence on the slopes
during the eruption and his constant messages of
reassurance to the population of Naples were credited
with avoiding a general panic. [See also: this New York Times article from
1906, praising Matteucci.] There had been a
few warnings of the strong 1906 eruption a few years
earlier. In 1900 there was a "Strombolian eruption,"
that is, a strong but relatively low-level volcanic
eruption with regular ejections of incandescent
material to altitudes of tens to hundreds of meters.
From the city of Naples at night, it was something
like watching a pretty good fireworks display. That
activity continued through 1903. In the 1880s and
1890s there was constant visible volcanic activity on
Vesuvius, small but enough to produce minor secondary
cones and small lave flows. As in 1930, the period
also contained a major earthquake, this one on the
island of Ischia on March 4, 1881. Eruption
of 1872 (photo: G. Sommer)
Eruption on
1822 (painting: Camillo De Vito)
The modern cycle of eruptions of Mt.
Vesuvius started Dec. 16, 1631 with an eruption
classified as “explosive” (as opposed to the less
violent “effusive” or “explosive/effusive”). The volcano
had been quiet for some centuries and then simply blew
its top. Most sources cite this eruption as the
“greatest since Pompeii.” It followed the familiar
behavior of an exploding volcano: lava fountains as high
as 4 km and an ash column as high as 15 km, which then
collapsed onto the slopes producing what is now called a
“pyroclastic flow.” It was followed in 1637, ’49, ’52,
’54, and ’60 by lesser eruptions. Some of those were
accompanied by earthquakes; indeed, even the dreaded
bubonic plague showed up in 1656, lending credence
amongst believers to the rumor that the world was coming to an end.
It didn’t, of course, and it won’t after the next one.
(My friends—the people in those houses in the top
photo—tell me that I should really be quiet and,
especially, should delete those last few words.)
Some sources say, simply, that the statue was done at the behest of Spanish Viceroy Don Pedro de Toledo around 1550, and some from the 1600s even claimed that the siren putting out the flames of the volcano was intended to represent the way Toledo had extinguished the fires of potential revolution. Be that as it may, there are references to the statue from the 1400s, so it couldn't have been Toledo's idea, no matter what people wanted to read into it later on. Most opinion is that it is from the Aragonese period in the 1400s and the Spanish effort around 1550 was a remake. That remake was overseen by Giovanni da Nola (1488-1558), one of the great names of the Italian Renaissance. He worked principally in Naples. His altars, sepulchers, and monuments are found in many of the great churches in Naples; he also built a number of the city's monument fountains from the 1500s. The fountain has recently been
restored and is located outside the church of Santa Caterina della Spina
Corona, not far from the Fredrick II university
in what used to be the Portanova section of the city.
The church, itself, goes back to 1354 when it was built
as an annex to a Benedictine monastery and, in its long
history, has even been a synagogue. The original statue
of winged Parthenope is in the National
Museum. The restored fountain uses an exact
replica by Achille d'Orso,
the prominent Neapolitan sculptor from the early 1900s.
In popular and not totally unexpected vulgar parlance,
the work is also referred to locally as la fontana delle zizze
(The Fountain of the Tits). Finally, the current period of calm
on Vesuvius—no visible activity since 1944 (although
"events" such as rumblings and movement are detected by
instruments)—has been the longest in centuries. Maybe
the restoration of the statue is working.
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Eruptions count as major or
minor (and everything in between) depending on the
extent to which they are explosive or effusive, how
much ejecta they produce and the extent to which they
change the profile of the volcano, blowing bits and
pieces away, adding new craters, new lava flows, etc.
Thus, the eruptions of 1929 and 1926 were minor, but
they did, for example, add a few new craters and
damage nearby structures. There was also geologic
activity of a different nature near Naples in that
period; a major earthquake struck the Irpinia region
(i.e., near Avellino) on July 23, 1930, killing 1500
persons. (Earthquakes are not necessarily related to
volcanism, but at least in this area, there is that
possibility.) 
The year 1872
produced a massive eruption classified as
“explosive/effusive.” Somewhat earlier, in 1841,
the 
The 1850s had constant activity, more
Strombolian than explosive, but enough to cause lava to
flow, secondary cones to open and artists to paint. The
same can be said for the eruption of 1839 and other
smaller events in that decade. There is, again, constant
activity back to the turn of that century, including a
major eruption in 1822 (image, right); in the 1700s,
there were at least three notable eruptions: 1707, 1737,
and 1794, all of which destroyed local villages. As
well, there were weaker eruptions in the 1750s and
1760s. The 1794 eruption opened craters at relatively
low levels on the slopes—at 480 and 320 meters. (The
current height of Mt. Vesuvius is 1280 meters.)
By agreement, then, we stop at the 1631
eruption, a harbinger of the active 300 years to come.
But perhaps one item from before that is of interest.
One of the most interesting and iconic statues (photo,
right) in the city of Naples is the