IF YOU want to buy an active volcano, now is your chance: an Italian hotelier and businessman is offering one for sale — or at least the cone — on the appropriately named island of Vulcano off the coast of Sicily.

Gustavo Conti’s family bought the 550m-wide crater, along with much of the rest of the island, a century ago from James Stevenson, an eccentric Scotsman who arrived in the Aeolian Islands in 1870. He bought a villa at Porto di Levante, Vulcano’s port, with land stretching up to, and including, the crater. He employed Signor Conti’s grandfather in the island’s sulphur mines.

Contemporary accounts describe a landscape of oleander, grapes and fig trees, with Stevenson’s wisteria-covered villa known as “the Scotsman’s palace”. The island, 22 sq km, is still valued for its beauty and peace.

Stevenson’s Mediterranean idyll came to a violent end in 1888-90, when the volcano repeatedly erupted, at one point hurling “a bus-size boulder” in his direction. After this experience he returned to Scotland on his steam yacht, Firefay, selling his property and land to the Conti family.

Signor Conti, 60, who owns several hotels on Vulcano, said that the smoking crater and its “hissing fissures” came with surrounding fertile land. “We have the right to sell it. We even pay taxes on it,” he said.

Asked by The Times how much he wanted for the volcano cone, he said that he was “open to offers”, adding: “If someone offered me €10,000 (£6,800) I would send them on their way with a laugh. On the other hand if some American millioniare or Arab sheikh makes me a decent offer I won’t say no. There is a stupendous view over the Aeolian Islands to Sicily from the top.”

Vulcano also produces wine from Malvasia vines that were planted by Stevenson. The result was once described by the French writer Guy de Maupassant as “the Devil’s wine” because of “the slight taste of sulphur it leaves on the palate”.

Porto di Levante still boasts a wine bar called The Stevenson Wine Cellars, housed in the cellars where Stevenson kept his vintages.

Signor Conti admitted that whoever bought the volcano would be taking a risk, since vulcanologists say that it could erupt again. The volcano on the nearby island of Stromboli last erupted in December 2002, causing a minor tidal wave.

The word volcano comes from Vulcano, said by the Romans to be home to Vulcan, the god of fire. Its crater was considered the entrance to Hell by many during the Middle Ages, including Dante. Nowadays the Aeolian Islands are a popular tourist destination.

Stevenson (1822-1903), who was born in Ayrshire, was fascinated by science and experimented with the idea of harnessing volcanic energy. According to one local history, he “enforced strict Anglo-Saxon land laws, had his house and land guarded by ferocious dogs, and forced workers to mine sulphur from the crater vents”.

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