Marble is a crystalline structured calcareous stone formed through metamorphism. Apuan Alps are a huge marble deposit with a volume of several cubic kilometres. Carrara reveals to be the widest pool and has three main dales: Colonnata, Fantiscritti and Ravaccione where, besides the ordinary white marble, different variations of marble are extracted as the statuary, veined, purple, “calcata” and “bardiglio”.

The mining activity has ancient origins (II cent. b.C.): it was developed by the Romans, who largely used our marble to build their villas and monuments and kept on growing to reach the present industrial development. Today, thanks to the improvement of techniques, materials, tools, Carrara’s basins produce about 800.000 tons of marble a year.

The Cut
Marble is used in various, different ways: to produce decorative objects, sculptures, monuments, and obviously to produce linings and covering. Marble economy is based principally on decorative furnishing area. But the marble, after its extraction from the mountains, needs to be cut and polished through long and difficult working practices. In the past the huge marble blocks were hand-cut with a unique blade, which penetrated slowly into the stone. Later water-looms were used to cut the stones, obtainig square marble pieces called “quadrette”, “ambrogette” or simply tiles, which, afterwards, were hand-polished. The technological development helped men’s work: thanks to the building of special water machines called “frulloni”, it was possible to polish the products in a simpler way (not only by hand). Today the sew-mills make quarrymen’s work safer and lighter.

Visiting the quarries (driving, with caution, on comfortable asphalted streets), looking at the white basins, the flows and the titanic human work is an unforgettable experience.

The Artists
Without man’s hand moulding sculptures and monuments, marble will be just a cold shapeless white stone. Ancient Romans preferred the white marble to decorate their houses and to celebrate their glory, building wonderful monuments, villas and public structures. For this reason Carrara has seen the birth of several generations of sculptors, stone-cutters and artists, who learned to know, to work the white stone and to turn it in a work of art. Several unknown artists have left traces of their work in the streets, square, churches and so on.
They contributed together with more famous artists, to decorate, and enrich the severe buildings and, as the great master Michelangelo, to create fabulous statues, so “alive” than they seem to have a soul.