While sulphur in the solid state is immediately recognisable by its typical yellow colour, you can often see white crystals around the fumaroles. These are gypsum crystals, also produced by the sublimation (see Sublimates link) of the volcanic gases as they leave the surface. In fact, gypsum is ...

The Stack in Porto di Levante, around 70 metres high, is what remains of a volcanic structure in the north-east part of the Caldera of the Fossa, between here and Vulcanello. In the second half of 1800, before the eruption of 1888-1890, the Stack was known as “the Factory” because of the inten...

In physics and chemistry, sublimation is the direct change from the gas state to the solid state, skipping the liquid state, and vice versa. Volcanic gases are made up of 95% water. The remaining 5% of the volume is dissolved sulphur, fluorine, chlorine and carbon dioxide. When the temperature dro...

Hephaestus was a builder and architect, goldsmith and gunsmith, blacksmith and inventor of mechanical objects. He forged the weapons of Heracles and Achilles, two great heroes. His cult has origins in Lemnos, where the ancient inhabitants believed that the volcanic fires coming out of the mountain M...

Descriptions of volcanic eruptions, even quite accurate ones, are present in history in Roman times starting from Pliny the Elder and Pliny the Younger, who observed the eruptions of Vesuvius and the Phlegraean Fields. The first properly scientific observation of an eruption, however, was document...

Fumaroles are characteristic of active volcanic areas, and are merely smoke escaping from fractures or holes in the ground. They often follow the circular shape of the crater, or may come from within it. This cloud of gas is composed almost entirely of water vapour, which carries with it some other ...

In volcanology the caldera is a wide basin or depression, often occupied by a circular or elliptical lake, which is normally created after the sinking of the magmatic chamber of a volcanic structure, caused by its partial emptying following a massive eruption. When the volcano is active again, it...

Alum, the salt exuded from the earth “…quod intellegitur salsugo terrae”, and very useful for dyeing wool and cleaning gold, according to Pliny the Elder, has been a source of wealth for the Aeolian Islands since ancient times. Alum mining had already been practised by the Romans who, in amp...

The sea merchants’ epic began in Salina in 1800 where oil, wine and capers were produced and sold to the inhabitants of Lipari, who then resold them in Sicily and Calabria. In 1810 the demand for malvasia increased thanks to the 10,000 English soldiers who were stationed in Messina to counter the...

At the far north end of the promenade of Santa Marina, on the island of Salina, you can visit part of a Roman-age spa complex, in use during the first centuries of the Imperial Age, and reused in late Roman times (at least until the beginning of the 6th century AD) as a factory for processing and sa...