Der Ätna

The Arabs called it Djebel Utlamat (outstanding mountain), the Normans Mons Djebel (mountain-mountain), and the Sicilians Mungibeddu (beautiful mountain). The Venetian Pietro Bembo even referred to it as the unmarried mountain in his work De Aetna (1496) to express its uniqueness in the geomorphological context of Sicily. Mount Etna, with a circumference of 135 km, the legendary forge of the gods, is a highly complex volcano that results from the accumulation and layering of eruption materials that have gathered over hundreds of thousands of years. The lava flows, the enormous amounts of slag, gravel, sand, and ash that are continuously expelled by the volcanic activity of this extraordinary thermodynamic machine have formed the visible mountain, which stands 3,325 meters high, through layer upon layer of deposition.