Discovering Vesuvius with the colleagues of the Storia e Clima research seminar

: Published: 14 June 2024

The VeLoCi research group joins the activities planned as part of the 17th International Storia e Clima Seminar “La percezione del rischio e della catastrofe nei secoli XVI-XVIII: testimonianze, suppliche, racconti, diari, discorsi”, held in Naples between 12 and 14 June.

The academic meeting, organized by the ERC research project DisComPoSE (Università di Napoli Federico II) in collaboration with the research project Historia y Clima (Universidad de Alicante), included the participation of our research member Milena Viceconte, who presented a conference focused on devotion in Cadiz during the Lisbon earthquake of 1755. See the programme below.

The seminar ended with a special tour at the Somma-Vesuvius volcanic site in the Parco Nazionale del Vesuvio, which took us to the crater of the Gran Cono. Once on the mountaintop, we observed the surroundings of the Roman cities affected by the eruption of 79 AD, which we are investigating through our explorations.

The walking tour was also a moment of stimulating exchange with the participants in the meeting, particularly Prof. Armando Alberola Romà, a specialist of climate history from the Universidad de Alicante, and Prof. Virginia García Acosta, a social anthropologist from CIESAS, both leading members of the Academia Mexicana de la Historia. The conversations with Prof. María Eugenia Petit-Breuilh Sepúlveda from the Universidad de Sevilla, who studied historical volcanology in the Spanish-American context, were also very fruitful. Recently reprinted is her pioneering research book on the historical reconstruction of the eruptive episodes of volcans in Chile.

We would like to express our gratitude to our colleague Prof. Domenico Cecere from the Università di Napoli Federico II, who is the scientific leader of the ERC DisComPoSE project, for organizing the event and allowing us to join them.