Mount Etna dominates the north eastern corner of Sicily and you can see it from practically everywhere – until you want to photograph it, of course. What’s almost more impressive than Etna itself though is the lava field which spreads for miles in every direction. Vegetation struggles to gain a grip in that landscape and you are left confused as to whether the latest eruption was five years ago, or five hundred. In fact Etna is one of the world’s most active volcanoes; there were significant eruptions in the early 1990s, Randazzo narrowly escaped destruction in 1981, Mascali was destroyed in 1928 and 10 villages were destroyed in the eruption of 1669 when the lava flows reached the town of Catania, five weeks after the original eruption.