taken from my hotel room in Sorrento;
Mount Vesuvius is located on the Gulf of Naples, Italy, about 9 km (5.6 mi) east of Naples.
It is best known for its eruption in AD 79 that led to the burying and destruction of the Roman cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum, as well as several other settlements. The eruption ejected a cloud of stones, ashes and volcanic gases to a height of 33 km (21 mi), spewing molten rock and pulverized pumice at the rate of 6×105 cubic metres (7.8×105 cu yd) per second, ultimately releasing a hundred thousand times the thermal energy released by the Hiroshima-Nagasaki bombings. More than 16,000 people died in the eruption, but exact numbers are unknown.
Vesuvius has erupted many times since and is the only volcano on the European mainland to have erupted within the last hundred years. Today, it is regarded as one of the most dangerous volcanoes in the world because of the population of 3,000,000 people living nearby, making it the most densely populated volcanic region in the world, as well as its tendency towards violent, explosive eruptions of the Plinian type.4
The volcano has not erupted since 1944, which was the last time it erupted in the 20th century. The eruption destroyed 80 aircraft of the US Air Force, that were stationed at the Pompeii Airfield.