Mount Vesuvius it is regarded as one of the most dangerous volcanoes in the world because of the population of 3,000,000 people living near enough to be affected as well as its tendency towards violent, explosive eruptions. It is the only volcano on the European mainland to have erupted within the last hundred years.

The eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79 destroyed the Roman cities of Pompeii, Herculaneum, Oplontis and Stabiae, as well as several other settlements. The eruption ejected a cloud of stones, ashes and volcanic gases to a height of 33 km, ultimately releasing 100,000 times the thermal energy released by the Hiroshima-Nagasaki bombings… wikipedia.org