Island
Insula Vulcani
Vulcano
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Smoking craters that glowed like fire at night led ancient people to place the workshop of the god Vulcan on Insula Vulcani, now Vulcano, the southernmost of the Lipari Islands off Sicily. Greek writers mostly called it Hiera, the sacred island. Its northern peninsula, Vulcanello, is probably the new island that rose from the sea in the year 183 BC and was later joined to the main island by ash and lava. There was no settlement here; people from neighbouring Lipara farmed the land. Under the Ostrogothic king Theoderic the island served as a place of exile.