On the way to the Cinque Terre, we briefly stopped at Carrara. I fear my prior knowledge of Carrara marble was that Michelangelo's The David was carved from a slightly flawed block of this stone. The town post office was built with three kinds of Carrara marble. It has two statues in front, one is a quarry worker and the other a sculptor who carves the stone.
We took a shuttle bus up the mountain (or coach was too large to manage these roads) for a tour and a visit to the Carrara quarries outdoor museum. We saw quarried marble, actual quarries at work, and heard descriptions of how marble was quarried in the past until now. Fascinating!
We took a shuttle bus up the mountain (or coach was too large to manage these roads) for a tour and a visit to the Carrara quarries outdoor museum. We saw quarried marble, actual quarries at work, and heard descriptions of how marble was quarried in the past until now. Fascinating!
The first shot is looking from the outdoor museum up at one of the three active marble quarries. The white on the top of the mountain is marble, not snow. At the Marble Museum, our tour guide, Anna, told us about how workers would blow horns to warn others of an impending blast, an accident, or a slide. This statue is in honor of one of those workers. The next sculpture shows how marble used to be quarried by hand before the use of giant power saws was introduced (as seen in the next picture with William gazing at the mountain wondering how they ever managed to get that huge saw all the way up there!).
The left photo above is of blocks of marble awaiting sale. It is hard to imagine how such huge blocks were transported around Italy to be sculpted back during the Renaissance. On the right are slabs of marble awaiting sale and/or shipment. The quarries actually prefer to sell blocks but are selling a percentage as slabs to ensure the local crafts folks continue to know how to do the slicing.