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60 free Mount Vesuvius trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Mount Vesuvius trivia starts, inevitably, with AD 79: the 33-kilometre column of ash, the pumice raining on Pompeii, the surges that cooked Herculaneum, and a fat Roman admiral who sailed towards the disaster saying fortune favours the brave. But the volcano has erupted dozens of times since, buried villages in 1631, wrecked a squadron of American bombers in 1944, and today sits nine kilometres from Naples with 600,000 people in its official red zone. This quiz covers the whole story: the mythology (a serpent on household shrines, a mountain devoted to Hercules), the geology (an African plate diving under Europe, a somma caldera around a newer cone), the two Plinys and their letters to Tacitus, the argument over whether the eruption happened in August or October, the casts and the arched vaults, the tax break Theodoric gave survivors of 512, the eruption that moved the 1908 Olympics to London, the funicular that gave the world 'Funiculì, Funiculà', and the seven-day evacuation plan. Easy questions suit anyone who has heard of Pompeii; the expert tier is for people who know how many Holocene eruptions the Smithsonian counts. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on Vesuvius and the eruption of AD 79, and the supporting sentence is attached to each question.
30 of 60 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Vesuvius stands on the shore of which body of water?
The Gulf of Naples
It is about nine kilometres east of the city and only a short distance from the water.
Q 02Vesuvius is in which region of Italy?
Campania
It is one of several volcanoes making up the Campanian volcanic arc.
Q 03What type of volcano is Vesuvius?
A stratovolcano
More precisely a somma-stratovolcano: a large cone partly ringed by the rim of an older, collapsed structure.
Q 04The steep rim partly encircling Vesuvius's cone is the remnant of which older, much higher structure?
Mount Somma
It gave its name to the geological term 'somma volcano' for any volcano with a summit caldera around a newer cone.
Q 05How high is the summit of Vesuvius's main cone above sea level?
1,281 m
Around 25,000 years ago the early volcano was about 2,000 metres tall, with its summit 500 metres east of today's.
Q 06The only surviving eyewitness account of the AD 79 eruption is two letters written to which historian?
Tacitus
The letters were written some 25 years after the event and describe the death of the author's uncle.
Q 07Which Roman writer's two letters are the only surviving eyewitness account of the AD 79 eruption?
Pliny the Younger
He was a teenager watching from across the bay, and declined his uncle's invitation to sail towards the volcano.
Q 08What post did Pliny the Elder hold at Misenum when the eruption began?
Commander of the Roman fleet
He first launched galleys to evacuate the coast, then went himself in a light vessel to rescue a friend.
Q 09Advised by his helmsman to turn back from the falling cinders, what did Pliny the Elder reply?
'Fortune favours the brave'
He pressed on across the bay and never came home.
Q 10Fleeing a building filling with tephra, Pliny the Elder's party protected their heads with what?
Pillows
The admiral had been napping and snoring loudly when they woke him to leave.
Q 11Pliny the Elder died at which town, roughly 16 km from the vent?
Stabiae
The modern town of Castellammare di Stabia stands roughly where it was.
Q 12Eyewitnesses blamed Pliny the Elder's death on sulphurous gas. What do modern writers suspect?
A stroke or heart attack
He was corpulent, his companions were unaffected, and his body was found the next day without injuries.
Q 13How high did the AD 79 eruption's cloud of stones, ash and gas rise?
33 km
It spewed molten rock and pumice at some six hundred thousand cubic metres per second.
Q 21For five centuries the eruption was dated to which day, based on a 1508 printing of Pliny's letter?
24 August
Manuscript copying over fourteen centuries may have corrupted the original date.
Q 22A charcoal graffito found at Pompeii in 2018 suggested the eruption happened on or after which date?
17 October
Autumn fruit, heavy clothing and wine vessels found earlier already pointed to a post-harvest date.
Q 23Which emperor had been reigning for only a few months when Vesuvius erupted in AD 79?
Titus
Two of his coins found in Pompeii's House of the Golden Bracelet were minted only weeks before the disaster.
Q 14The AD 79 eruption released roughly how many times the energy of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs?
100,000
The energy came largely from steam superheated by magma meeting seawater that had seeped into deep faults.
Q 15Violent, explosive eruptions of the Vesuvius type are known by what name?
Plinian
The name comes from the nephew's detailed description of the AD 79 eruption, including his uncle's death.
Q 16An earthquake in which year damaged Pompeii, some of it still unrepaired when Vesuvius erupted?
AD 62
Six hundred sheep died of 'tainted air' near Pompeii around then, a hint the quake was linked to the volcano.
Q 17Herculaneum was buried under roughly how many metres of pyroclastic surge material?
23 m
The wind spared it from the pumice fall that hit Pompeii, but the surges came first to Herculaneum.
Q 18By 2003, roughly how many plaster casts of bodies had been recovered in and around Pompeii?
1,044
About 38 percent were in the ashfall layers, mostly killed by collapsing roofs; the rest were in the surge deposits.
Q 19In 1980 the remains of about 300 people were found where at Herculaneum?
In arched vaults by the old shore
They were packed at up to three people per square metre; those caught on the beach itself died of thermal shock.
Q 20Besides Pliny the Elder, the only named noble victim was Agrippa, son of which Herodian princess?
Drusilla
His father was the procurator Antonius Felix, and his wife died with him.
Q 24In 472 and again in the 17th century, Vesuvian ash fell on which distant city, over 1,200 km away?
Constantinople
On those occasions the whole of southern Europe was blanketed by ash.
Q 25The December eruption that ended centuries of quiet in the 17th century killed roughly how many people?
3,000
Lava flows buried villages and torrents of lahar added to the damage; activity was almost continuous afterwards.
Q 26The 1906 eruption forced Italy to give up hosting which event, which moved to London?
The 1908 Summer Olympics
The money was diverted to rebuilding Naples; the eruption also produced the most lava ever recorded from Vesuvius.
Q 27In which year did Vesuvius last erupt?
1944
It has been quiet since, though crater landslides have raised dust clouds and false alarms.
Q 28In 1944, a US bomb group near Terzigno lost about 80 of which aircraft to Vesuvius's ash?
B-25 Mitchell bombers
Tephra wrecked the fabric control surfaces, engines, Plexiglas and gun turrets of the 340th Bombardment Group's planes.
Q 29Which village was destroyed by lava in the 1944 eruption of Vesuvius?
San Sebastiano al Vesuvio
Massa di Somma, Ottaviano and part of San Giorgio a Cremano went with it.
Q 30In which year was the area around Vesuvius declared a national park?
1995
Part of the aim is to stop new building on the slopes and shorten evacuation times.