Many of the least eighty eruptions of the six silicic eruptive cycles in the last 50 ka at Pantelleria started out with explosive phases and ended with lava effusion. The pyroclastic rocks are rhyolitic in composition while the later-erupted lavas are less evolved up to trachyte probably due to the presence of a shallow and compositionally zoned magma chamber tapped at increasing depth during the eruptions. The products of twenty explosive eruptions have been recognized. Most of them are represented by fallout deposits, the only exceptions being the Green Tuff and the Fossa Carbonara Tuff. Hydromagmatism is very rare though the magmas interacted with sea water. It is supposed that interaction was not efficient because the magmas were not vesiculated and disrupted. Horizons showing variable degrees of welding up to vitrophyres, have often been identified in the air-fall tuffs. Most of the eruptions were characterized by low eruptive columns and were likely to have involved a strombolian-type mechanism.