Catania: Mount Etna Morning/Sunset Tour (Pickup & Tasting)
- Hotel pickup
- Small group
- Cable car paid on the day
From €59 per personSee dates
Below 2,500 m: a day among the side craters
The lower mountain is where Etna’s flank eruptions left their marks, and these walks go from one to the next. About half of the 69 leave Catania in the morning by minibus, and several stop for coffee in a village on the way up. Etnaround's trek stops in Trecastagni so the group can buy a sandwich for lunch, and Etna Guide Tours' hike does the same in another village on the slope.
On the south side the walking starts near Rifugio Sapienza, at about 1,850 to 1,970 m, beside the Silvestri craters. INGV dates them to the flank eruption of July to December 1892, which opened its vents between about 1,800 and 2,025 m. Entry to the craters costs €5 (Funivia dell’Etna’s page, October 2026). From there the longer walks climb. Etnaround goes up about 550 m to 2,400 m, past the lava flow of 2001, and stops for lunch on the edge of the Valle del Bove, the huge basin below the summit craters. Kemedia’s Valle del Bove viewpoint hike reaches a belvedere at around 2,500 m. Shorter tours, like ETNA VIBES' Silvestri walk, stay near 2,000 m for an hour and a half.
The ground is cinder and old lava, firm in places and loose on the slopes, and many routes come down a steep run of soft volcanic sand. It is cooler and windier than the coast, so the listings ask for a windbreaker and closed shoes even in summer.
The lava cave
Nearly half of the 69 tours add a lava tube, a tunnel left when the surface of a lava flow cooled and the molten rock inside drained away. You go in with a helmet and a head lamp, which Kemedia’s sunset trek with a cave hands out. Lemontour visits the Grotta dei Tre Livelli; Etna Guide Tours walks through the Grotta Pitagora on the way down. Etnaround warns that when tremors run high or an eruption has just ended, the cave is skipped.
On the north side the story is the eruption of October 2002. INGV dates its start to the night of 26 to 27 October, when a fissure opened on the north-east flank in an eruption that destroyed the tourist station at Piano Provenzana. Guide Vulcanologiche Etna Nord’s 2002 craters trek starts from the Piano Provenzana car park, about 1,800 m, passes the ruins of the Hotel Le Betulle and climbs the cinder cones the eruption left, in about three hours. It needs four people to run, and from December to March the guides rent snowshoes on site for €12.
Most of these walks cost nothing extra on the day: only a handful of the 69 listings add a cable car or 4x4 fee. They also run when the summit treks are turned back, because they stay below the summit zone that the town ordinances close first. The exception is a fresh vent or lava flow nearby: Belpasso’s ordinance 135 of 10 August 2026 draws a safety band around active lava at any altitude.