Mount Etna belched smoke and ashes on Tuesday, but Italian authorities said it posed no danger to the surrounding villages. The Catania airport was closed as a precaution.

"We've seen worse," the head of the INGV National Institute for Geophysics and Vulcanology in the nearby city of Catania, Stefano Branco, told Italian news agency AGI.

The eruption from Etna's southeastern crater began late Tuesday afternoon. The plume of smoke could be seen from many kilometres away.

Italian authorities said they were monitoring the situation closely in the three villages at the foot of the volcano—Linguaglossa, Fornazzo and Milo.

Images showed a spectacular rose-coloured plume of ashes above the snow-capped summit, but the cloud had largely dissipated by nightfall, while lava flows continued to glow.

At 3,324 metres, Etna is the tallest active volcano in Europe and has erupted frequently in the past 500,000 years.