The Aeolian Islands
Seven volcanic islands, and on one of them lava comes out every twenty minutes.
The Aeolians are seven islands north of Sicily, all born from volcanoes, and since 2000 they have been Unesco heritage for geological reasons: explosive volcanism is studied here, and two types of eruption, the vulcanian and the strombolian, are named after two of these islands.
Lipari is the largest and has the archaeological museum; Vulcano has a crater that takes an hour to climb and sulphurous mud baths at its foot; Stromboli has been in permanent eruption for at least two thousand years and in the evening you watch the Sciara del Fuoco from a boat; Salina has two extinct volcanoes, the densest greenery and the malvasia; Panarea, Filicudi and Alicudi are small and increasingly bare.
How you get there
Hydrofoils and ferries leave from Milazzo, the main port, and in summer also from Messina, Palermo and Naples. Milazzo to Lipari is forty minutes by hydrofoil. The car stays behind: on the islands you move on foot, by scooter or in the little three-wheelers, and on Panarea and Alicudi there are no cars at all.
There are very few campsites and they fill up early; many people do the Aeolians as a day trip from Milazzo, or spend one night on Lipari. The evening excursions to Stromboli, to see the explosions from the sea, leave from Lipari, Salina and Panarea.