The volcanism of Italy is due chiefly to the presence, a short distance to the south, of the boundary between the Eurasian Plate and the African Plate. Italy is a volcanically active country, containing the only active volcanoes in mainland Europe (while volcanic islands are also present in Greece, in the volcanic arc of the southern Aegean). The lava erupted by Italy's volcanoes is thought to result from the subduction and melting of one plate below another.
Three main clusters of volcanism exist: a line of volcanic centres running northwest along the central part of the Italian mainland (see: Campanian volcanic arc); a cluster northeast of Sicily in the Aeolian Islands; and a cluster southwest of Sicily around the island of Pantelleria, in the Mediterranean's Strait of Sicily. Sardinia has had a totally separate geological history from that of the rest of Italy, where several cycles of volcanic activity occurred, the last of which ended at the beginning of the Pleistocene, but currently hosts only permanently extinct volcanoes.
