Tsunamis in Italy and the Mediterranean between perception and historical reconstruction

The tragedies of great earthquake waves in Southeast Asia (Indonesia 2004 and Japan 2011) led to the entry into the common lexicon of a new word - 'tsunami' - which was until that time confined within the boundaries of science. The exoticism of the term and the geographical distance of these disasters were both reassuring elements for public opinion in Italy and elsewhere, and several statistical studies show that Italian people have a low level of hazard awareness. Yet many tsunamis have occurred in the Mediterranean Sea, and more specifically along the Italian coast, over the centuries. The aim of this work is therefore to identify the main catastrophic events of the Mare Nostrum and the way these tsunamis were perceived by people at the time.