A deep, narrow, and distorted Benioff zone, plunging from the Ionian Sea towards the southern Tyrrhenian basin, is the remnant of a long and eastward migrating subduction of eastern Mediterranean lithosphere. From

Oligocene to Recent, subduction generated the Western Mediterranean and the Tyrrhenian back-arc basins, as well as an accretionary wedge constituting the Southern Apenninic Arc. This paper describes the present configuration of the Tyrrhenian-Ionian system; it tries to interpret, also on the base of data

recently achieved in marine and emerged areas, the history of its progressive evolution during the last 10 Ma. It also takes into account

some unusual features of the system, as a late development of arc volcanism and the onset of large vertical movements coupled to extension and shortening.