Tours are returning to the slopes of Mount Etna after its largest eruption in four years sent tourists fleeing from a vast column of gas and ash on Monday. After footage of the dramatic eruption circulated online - showing tourists sprinting down the volcano as black ash spewed several kilometres into the sky - Italian geological authorities were quick to quell fears that tourists and residents were under any danger.

In 1669, in what has been considered the volcano’s worst known eruption, lava buried a swath of Catania, about 15 miles away and devastated dozens of villages. An eruption in 1928 cut off a rail route circling the mountain’s base.

A massive eruption at Mt. Etna forced tourists to flee the volcano on Monday after a plume of high temperature gases, ash and rock “several kilometers high” billowed into the air above them, Italian authorities said.