Mount Vesuvius is located only 27 Km from Cervinara, the town in Italy where my family came from. Although its last significant eruption was in 1944, something on the scale of the AD 79 event that leveled Pompeii and Herculaneum is predicted to occur in the future.
Perhaps this sense of impending danger contributed to the motivations that inspired my forebears to immigrate to America. The active volcano has an elevation of about 1200 m, and can be accessed today by a road leading up to the crater through the Parco Nazionale del Vesuvio.
The images of Vesuvius on Google Earth are vivid. You can interactively explore the crater and surroundings by dragging your mouse on top of this detailed embedded satellite image and zooming in and out. If you zoom in on the access path to the crater at the upper left side of the photo, you can clearly discern the shadowy images of people walking to and fro.
