Naples sits on volcanic monsters - and one of them threatens to consume the city

News Credit: BBC Image Credit: Pomona Pictures

Beneath one of Italy's most densely populated cities, there is danger brewing.

Naples is a city that moves at more than one pace. At the fastest speed, you have the chaos of the day-to-day: cars and motorbikes hurtling through the Italian city's streets like blood cells within a vein. Then there is a slower evolution, that of human history. This is a metropolis still shaped by decisions made hundreds of years ago: networks of narrow alleyways that no city-planner would ever design today; modern offices and hotels pressed against Roman ruins and centuries-old villas.

What's less obvious is that Naples also has a geological pace – and it's this one that holds the most power. Mostly it runs at a barely perceptible creep, but every so often, it accelerates into catastrophe: an eruption of fire and rock that disrupts all other timescales in the city.

The volcanoes of Naples keep a different time to human beings – evolving over decades, centuries or even millennia – so it can be easy to assume they are static. This is far from the truth.

Continue reading here: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20240321-the-risk-of-volcano-eruption-in-naples-vesuvius-campi-flegrei