Around the year 1000, numerous sacred buildings, such as the parish of Sant'Andrea, started to be built near Carrara and they consolidated the presence of the Church in the whole area of the Lunigiano. Soon, a powerful bishopric settled in Luni. It was able to establish its presence in Lucca by assuming the control of the area since 1124.

Around the first half of the XII century, Carrara, where the marble extraction activity had recovered fully, became the Bishopric seat of the Lunigiana curia. The town, that had been renowned for some centuries, rapidly became autonomous and engaged a dispute with the ecclesiastic power to obtain privileges and political power.
The Emperor Frederick II's support to the laic authority began Guglielmo Malaspina's epic deeds. He was a feudatory belonging to the Estensi's dynasty and he was the author of the fortifications carried out in the medieval town. Carrara transformed itself into one of northern Tuscany's Ghibelline strongholds in a short time.
The centuries-old fight between the Church and the laic authority, that was sided by the Carrara inhabitants, had already inexorably marked the town's medieval history. In the XIII century, numerous agreements were reached with the bishopric about statutes and public jurisdiction (the 1260's agreement instituted marble tolls that still exist today).
In 1315, the Episcopal power was definitively defeated and the Florentines and the Genoese alternatively governed Carrara. The leader Castruccio Castracani, who was particularly appreciated for his renown as an adversary of the Church, was at the head of the town for some time.
Once it fell into the Malaspina's hands again, the city was the object of a heavy raid by Charles III's French troops. In the XV century, the town experienced a new phase of economic growth and it started to appear as the favourite destination of tradesmen and artists, while Carrara's artisans began to travel around Europe to carry out very well paid commissions. It was at this time that Piazza Alberica was born and developed as Carrara's economic centre in an area that the Lombards had destined to pasture in the ancient times.
In the XVIII century, Carrara lived a period characterized by an "enlightened" seigniory that implemented numerous reforms by affirming that the public administration owned the quarries and operated a land reform no longer based on feudalism but on temporary concessions. At the half of the century, also the works for the port started with the aim to prevent Carrara's ship trade from taxes for calling in other cities.
Once Carrara overcame Napoleon's occupation, it was given to the Dukedom of Modena, ruled by the Estensi, with the 1814's Restoration. Nevertheless, the patriotic and jacobinic ideas that had already consolidated in the territories of Carrara and Lunigiana caused the centre to be one of the protagonists of the Risorgimento risings, in particular, during the insurrection of 1831 led by Ciro Menotti. He became famous because it obliged the local authority to look for a refuge in the nearby Massa. Therefore, both Cavour and Napoleon III chose Carrara to trigger the Austrian uprising that allowed the French and the Piedmontese troops to attack the Dukedom of Modena.
Immediately after the Estensi had left and Carrara's was annexed to the Kingdom of Italy, the dictator Farini created the modern province of Massa and Carrara.