The Volcano and the Tourist

For five days, Catania's airport has been closed, ash from Mount Etna grounding flights at the busiest moment of the Italian summer. France 24 reports that hundreds of holidaymakers have been stranded, their plans dissolved into the grey drift of volcanic dust. The volcano, Europe's largest active one, has once again asserted its primacy over the schedules of men.

And yet, as Euronews notes, tourists are flocking to witness the eruption, despite safety warnings. There is something deeply Italian in this contradiction: the same natural force that disrupts travel also draws the traveller. The hikers in the Guardian's video, watching molten lava spill down the slopes, are not so different from the ancient Romans who marvelled at Vesuvius — though we now know how that story ended.

The foreign coverage tends to treat Etna as a nuisance or a spectacle, depending on the day's news cycle. We would ask for a longer view. The volcano is not an interruption to the Italian summer; it is the very ground on which the summer is built. The fertile slopes of Sicily, the wines and citrus that fill the markets, the very shape of the island — all are the work of this restless mountain. To close an airport is one thing; to close one's eyes to the force that made the landscape is another.

The reopening of Catania airport on Saturday, reported by The Local, will bring relief to stranded travellers. But the ash will remain, in the fields and on the rooftops, a fine grey reminder that Italy's beauty is not a static possession but a living, sometimes inconvenient, presence. The world may come to Italy to see the past, but the present — with all its eruptions, heatwaves and disruptions — is never far behind.