Nobody agrees how tall Etna is

Etna has 3 official heights: the INGV factsheet gives 3,324¹ m, the Civil Protection Department factsheet 3,350¹ m, and an INGV drone survey of July 2024 measured 3,369¹ m on the eastern rim of the Voragine.

3 institutions, 3 numbers, none of them wrong

The 3 reference values published by Italian institutions do not agree: 3,324¹ m on the INGV factsheet, 3,350¹ m on the Civil Protection Department factsheet, and 3,369¹ m from the INGV drone survey of July 2024.

That is a 45 m spread between the lowest and the highest, on the same mountain, from bodies that talk to each other daily.

None of them is an error. They are answers to slightly different questions, taken at different times, and the disagreement is a property of the object rather than of the institutions.

The 3,369 m came off a drone flight on July 7, 2024

The survey that produced 3,369¹ m was flown on July 7, 2024 by the cartography and drone laboratory of INGV Osservatorio Etneo, after the paroxysms of that summer.

The point measured is the eastern rim of the Voragine crater, and it is the greatest height ever measured on Etna. No more recent INGV survey has been found, which means that as of now the highest verified figure dates from July 2024.

The summit moved 3 times in 3 years

Etna's maximum has been remeasured repeatedly: 3,347² m at the Southeast Crater on August 10, 2021, then 3,354² m at the same crater on December 1, 2023, then 3,369¹ m at the Voragine on July 7, 2024.

Notice that the summit changed crater. The highest point of the volcano is not a fixed place: it is whichever cone has most recently been built up by fallout, and it moves across the summit area between eruptive phases.

A summit made of loose erupted material also collapses. The number goes down as well as up, which is why nobody publishes it as a constant.

Why the factsheets lag

Institutional factsheets are revised on an administrative cycle, and drone surveys happen after eruptive episodes, so a page giving 3,324¹ m is not out of date by accident.

The editorial rule that follows is simple and it applies to everything written about this mountain. Any Etna height must carry the year and the source with it. A bare number stops being true at the next eruptive phase, and nobody can say when that is.

If you want the current figure while you are there, the INGV Osservatorio Etneo is the body that produces it, and it publishes after eruptive episodes rather than on a calendar.

19,237 hectares of it are World Heritage

Etna has been on the UNESCO World Heritage list since 2013 under natural criterion viii, with a core area of 19,237³ hectares and a buffer zone of 26,220³ hectares.

The inscribed property is the uninhabited summit portion, not the towns and vineyards on the flanks. That distinction matters: a winery on the lower slopes is on Etna, but it is not inside the 19,237³ hectares.

Its eruptive activity is documented over at least 2,700³ years, among the longest written records of any volcano on earth. The Greeks wrote about it, and the series has not been interrupted since.

What to do with the disagreement

Pick 3,369¹ m if you want the highest measured value, cite July 2024 with it, and name INGV as the source.

Pick 3,324¹ m or 3,350¹ m if you are quoting an institutional factsheet, and say which one. What you cannot do honestly is write a single number with no year attached, which is what almost every page about Etna does.

There is a practical version of this too. If you are booking a summit excursion, the operator's altitude claims are marketing figures, and the ceiling you are actually allowed to reach on the day is set by the current volcanic and weather conditions, not by the number in the brochure.

The mountain that the 3 institutions are measuring is the same mountain that closes its upper slopes when conditions turn. A height of 3,369¹ m tells you where the summit is; it does not tell you that you will be allowed to stand on it.

For the city at the foot of it, see Catania.

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