For those who are eager to peek inside Europe's only active volcano, a shuttle takes tourists close to the top of Mount Vesuvius. After that, it is a thirty-minute hike to the lip of the crater. Mount Vesuvius erupted about seventy-nine years after Christ. The flourishing city of ---------- was obliterated, buried under a thirty-foot wave of hot mud and volcanic ash. The lunar-like top of the volcano stands at a dizzying 4,000 feet.?