Volcanoes as a natural art form

Introduction to the route

The proposed educational path provides a different view of the Aeolian Islands, contextualizing them within an open-air volcanological museum, where the volcanoes, and the shapes, colors and landscapes created by them, are true works of art.
Here then the sculptors and painters are none other than the volcanoes that have followed one another over time on the islands of Vulcano, Lipari, Salina, Filicudi, Alicudi, Panarea and Stromboli.
The Aeolian Islands entered by right in the UNESCO Wolrd Heritage List in 2000, thanks to their geological and volcanological heritage, unique in the world.
It is no coincidence that the Aeolian Islands are the birthplace of volcanology, understood as the science of the observation of volcanoes.
Even before Magna Graecia, which brought the Aeolian Islands to splendor, throughout the Mediterranean was known the “natural lighthouse” represented by the continuous eruptions of the island of Stromboli. The route then will interest the island of Vulcano, where the yellow brushstrokes of sulfur, given by the underwater fumaroles, stand out against the turquoise sea, and with the gray of the thermal mud pools.
Lipari, with its glorious history, which has made it the center of commercial routes in the Mediterranean, will be taken as an example to highlight how the fortifications and human architecture can merge with the black of volcanic rocks.
In Salina, Filicudi, Alicudi and Panarea the artists have been the wind and the sea, able to create in the stacks, in the rock arches, and in the caves of the real sculptures, always in evolution.
And finally Stromboli, the only island in the world where you can observe continuous eruptions from a terrace above the crater. A path of suggestions to recognize the Art of Nature.

The malleability of Vulcano’s mud

Panarea and its history

The prehistoric village of Cala Junco

Filicudi: small island, big history

The Aeolian Islands, where volcanology was born

The underwater fumarolic activity of Lisca Bianca

Pollara, between poetry and beauty

The senses tell The Pumice Quarries of Lipari

Lipari at the centre of Mediterranean history

The senses tell The Village of Capo Graziano

Myths and legends about volcanoes

Where do Vulcano’s gases come from?

The 2002-03 eruption

Stories of the sea and shipwrecks. The wrecks of the Aeolian Islands

The pure white of the pumice quarries

Salina, the green island with twin mountains

The senses tell The Stacks of Panarea

The stacks of Panarea

How pumice is formed

The polis of the living and the necropolis of the dead

The senses tell The salt lake of Lingua

Alicudi, where time has stood still

Between brush strokes of sulphur and clouds of steam: the fumaroles of the port of Vulcano

The ancient production of salt

The Gran Cratere of the Fossa: when the volcano becomes a sculptor

The Sciara del Fuoco

Filicudi, a submerged paradise

The Cathedral of Lipari and the Norman Cloister of the Benedictine Monastery

The senses tell The summit craters

The senses tell The Sciara del Fuoco

Lipari, where history intertwines with volcanoes to create archaeology

The summit craters

Volcanoes as a natural art form

The salt lake of Lingua

“Strombolian” activity in the place where its definition was born

The hidden part of the Aeolian Islands

At the heart of trade in history

Panarea, where sea and volcanoes become sculptors

Malvasia delle Lipari DOC

Stromboli, the volcano that breathes

Seven islands, dozens of volcanoes

The Thermal Baths of Saint Calogerus

Tsunamis: a not uncommon phenomenon in Stromboli

Vulcano, the youngest of the Aeolian works of art

The Village of Capo Graziano

The underwater morphological elements of the Aeolian Islands

“Vulcanian” eruptions

Lipari Castle, “fused” with the lava