Mount Etna rises 3,357 metres above the Ionian coast, its caldera span wider than the historic centre of Catania below. The volcano has erupted more than two hundred times since records began in 1500 BC, each event rewriting the topography of Sicily's eastern flank. The summit craters — Voragine, Bocca Nuova, the Northeast Crater and the New Southeast Crater — form a fractured crown that shifts with every paroxysm, depositing fresh tephra across slopes already layered with centuries of basalt, scoria and volcanic glass. Pliny the Elder documented an eruption in AD 79; Arab geographers charted lava flows in the medieval period; Darwin collected samples during the Beagle's Mediterranean passage. The stratovolcano remains Europe's most active, its eruptive behaviour studied by the Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia from observatories at Pizzi Deneri and the Osservatorio Etneo. Etna tours from Taormina depart daily from the coastal resort forty kilometres northeast, ascending through citrus groves, chestnut forests and the bare scoria desert of the summit zone. The volcano's ecological stratification is abrupt: Mediterranean maquis yields to Corsican pine at 1,400 metres, then to Etna broom and Astragalus siculus above the tree line. Lava flows from 1983, 2001 and 2002 bisect the Sapienza refuge access road, their ropey pahoehoe surfaces contrasting with the fractured aa textures of older eruptions. The upper cable car, installed in 2004 and rebuilt after the 2013 event, rises to 2,500 metres, shortening the final ascent to the summit craters by ninety minutes. Certified alpine guides lead roped groups across the summit plateau when seismic activity permits, navigating fumarole fields that vent sulphur dioxide at temperatures exceeding 400°C. The volcano's human geography is equally layered. Greek colonists worshipped Hephaestus at its base; Roman vintners cultivated vines on the southern slopes, their terraces now buried under metres of tephra. Medieval towns — Randazzo, Linguaglossa, Zafferana Etnea — cling to the periphery, their churches rebuilt after successive destructions. The 1669 eruption reached Catania's harbour, diverting lava with earthworks that failed within days. The 1928 flow consumed the town of Mascali entirely, its reconstruction undertaken five kilometres west. Today the Parco dell'Etna, established in 1987, protects 59,000 hectares of volcanic terrain, its boundaries redrawn with each new flow. The summit zone remains a laboratory for volcanology, its real-time monitoring feeding models used from Vesuvius to the Cascades.