Monte Nocilla is difficult to find in this photograph. It is not the large cone in the left background (that is actually Monte Serra Pizzuta), but instead it is the low vegetated hill that can be seen in the right central portion of the image. The two small buildings seen below that hill lie on the crater floor of Monte Nocilla, which has been largely buried by younger lavas, most recently in 1886 and 1910, which are now intensely quarried (foreground). View is from the east, 22 April 2000

Mamma Etna's countless children
Monte Nocilla
S flank, 15.006245° E, 37.634690° N
summit elevation: 953 m (E rim of crater)

If Monte Fusaro, about 0.9 km to the SSE, is a modest-sized cone, then Monte Nocilla is only a shadow of the cone that it once was. Buried nearly to its crater rims by more recent lavas (mainly of 1886), there is very little of this cone which merits to be called "monte" (mountain). Only its eastern crater rim rises about 20 m above the surroundings, and this is the maximum height of the cone. In contrast, its crater, which so far has escaped from being invaded by more recent lavas, lies nearly 40 m below the east rim and thus below the general elevation of the surrounding terrain. The crater and its rims are covered with forest and certainly it is a prehistoric feature.
I have passed close to Monte Nocilla several hundred times but only once stopped nearby to take the photograph shown above.

Return to the Etna flank cone index

Copyright © Boris Behncke, "Italy's Volcanoes: The Cradle of Volcanology"