A postcard from Vesuvius, but from that very day, 29 May 1925. The summit of Vesuvius can be reached by railway, which leaves from Pugliano on the Circumvesuviana, and then by funicular railway, which leaves from Resina. You reach the central crater inside which, after the great eruption of 1906 - which changed the volcano's features - a 'cone' was formed, which would remain active until 1929, when a new effusive eruption caused it to collapse. This is the spectacle before the eyes of the Lavello family on Vesuvius. In their Pathé Baby there is only one shot for the duration of the film. You really can't tear yourself away. It is a real postcard sent by the Ligurian family travelling through southern Italy, but it is anything but unchanging. In fact, as Cesco Tomaselli writes (in 'Le Vie d'Italia'), the change of the volcano due to the eruptions should 'put a considerable stok (sic) of picture postcards out of business.' This is what happened to the cone-shaped profile decapitated by the eruption almost twenty years earlier, which took about 300 metres off the mountain, and this is what will happen soon for the new tip that is growing, the small cone: "a new cataclysm will swallow the tip and the patient work of reconstruction will begin again." In the meantime, Lavello films it as it is that day, and fortunately at that moment the cataclysm is still a long way off.