Etna: 3,324, 3,350 or 3,369 meters, by source

Three official heights exist for Etna and all three are current: 3,324¹ m on the INGV factsheet, 3,350¹ m on the Civil Protection factsheet, and 3,369¹ m from an INGV drone survey of July 2024.

Three numbers, three institutions, one mountain

The INGV factsheet publishes 3,324¹ m above sea level. The Civil Protection Department factsheet publishes 3,350¹ m. The INGV drone survey of July 2024 measured 3,369¹ m on the eastern rim of the Voragine crater.

None of them is an error. Factsheets are revised on an institutional calendar; surveys are flown after eruptive phases. The gap between them is the gap between a reference document and a measurement.

The practical rule that follows is simple and almost nobody applies it: any height quoted for Etna needs a year and a source attached, or it means nothing. There is more on how the three figures came apart at nobody agrees how tall Etna is.

3,369 m is the highest ever measured

The 3,369¹ m recorded on July 7, 2024 by the drone and cartography laboratory of the INGV Osservatorio Etneo, on the eastern rim of the Voragine, is the greatest height ever measured on the volcano.

It followed a sequence: 3,347² m on the South East Crater on August 10, 2021, then 3,354² m on the same crater on December 1, 2023, then the Voragine taking the record after the paroxysms of July 2024.

We have found no INGV survey more recent than that. The number should be rechecked at least once a year, because on this mountain the summit elevation is a measurement with a shelf life.

Yellow alert, open conduit, four summit craters

Etna is at yellow alert and it is the largest volcano in Europe, with a base diameter of around 35 km, a surface of around 1,250³ square kilometers and 4 summit craters: Bocca Nuova, Voragine, the North East Crater and the South East Crater.

INGV describes three types of activity here: persistent degassing from the summit craters, terminal and subterminal eruptions, and lateral or eccentric eruptions from the flanks. Around a million people live on its slopes and eruptive activity began around 500,000⁴ years ago.

Etna and Stromboli are the two Italian volcanoes with an open conduit and persistent activity. Frequent eruption is precisely why their short term hazard is rated lower than that of a volcano that has been closed for centuries. The eastern flank is also in continuous deformation eastwards, at rates above 2 to 4 cm a year.

What the UNESCO listing covers

Mount Etna has been on the World Heritage list since 2013 under natural criterion viii, and the property is the uninhabited summit portion of the volcano: 19,237⁵ hectares of core zone with a 26,220⁵ hectare buffer.

The listing rests on the record rather than the view. Eruptive activity here is documented over at least 2,700⁵ years, one of the longest historical series anywhere in the world.

That boundary explains something visitors often find odd. The vineyards, the pistachio terraces and the towns on the lower slopes are outside the listed area, which starts where people stop living.

Getting up: 1,920 to 2,500 by cable car

The Etna cable car, the only one on the volcano, runs from Rifugio Sapienza on the south side above Nicolosi at 1,920 meters up to 2,500⁶ meters. From there the Tour 3000⁶ continues by 4x4 bus, or by snowcat above 2,500⁶ m in winter, to around 2,800⁶ meters, then on foot with a volcanological guide to 3,000⁶ meters.

The operator does not publish prices or timetables on any reachable page: the ticketing links redirect to a booking engine. This page therefore carries no fare, and a price quoted elsewhere is not verified.

What the quoted altitudes tell you is the shape of the day. You buy height in three stages, each with a different operator and a different constraint, and the last stage is guided by law rather than by preference. See Catania and volcanoes in Italy.

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