The Marble of Carrara

The extraction of marble in the territory of Carrara is a very ancient activity. Today, the most important quarries that are exploited are three: the one of Colonnata (where the precious Colonnata lard is also produced), the one of Fantiscritti and the one of Ravaccione. Visits to the Carrara quarries are possible and they do not require any particular permission.

It seems that in the Copper Age, marble was used to produce various objects and jewels for the funeral equipment of the first Apuan Alps inhabitants. What is certain, instead, is that the Romans were those who developed the extraction activity on a large scale that was linked to the birth of Luni's important port of call. From 177 B.C. on, the first ships carrying the famous Carrara marble in all the most important trade centres in the Mediterranean area sailed from this port. This material was immediately considered a luxury good destined to enrich the aristocratic villas under any form, from statues to columns, from covers to equipment.
Since the beginning of excavations, there has always been the employment of a highly specialized workforce able to extract the marble following detailed plans. Among the various figures that carried the operations out there were the "caesores", who took care of the detachment of the blocks, the "quadratarii", who shaped the marble, and the "maquinarii", who transported the material using the "lizze", robust carts with reinforced wood.
After the V century A.D., the Barbarian invasions caused the extraction activity to go through a period of decadence. It started again around the year 1000. With the spread of Christianity and the consequent proliferation of sacred buildings, marble became one of the privileged materials for Gothic and Romanesque architectures.
This was mainly due to the arrival of the "maestri comancini", a group of architects who made of the Carrara marbles one of the pivotal elements in the domes and churches of Pisa, Florence, Orvieto, Genoa and Lucca. Among them, Giovanni and Nicola Pisano stand out, whose pulpit in the Baptistery of Pisa is the most important.
Dante Alighieri, too, celebrated the splendour of the Carrara marble in one Canto of the Divine Comedy. Another genial artist, Michelangelo Buonarroti, chose it by going directly to the caves and selecting the blocks by himself to bring some of his most famous sculptures into being. The epic deeds of the Florentine Renaissance was indissolubly linked to this precious material with a smooth surface that perfectly fits the spasmodic anatomical research pursued by XVI-century sculptors. Other great artists who stocked up in the Tuscan chief-town during the years were Francesco Messina, Mario Sironi, Bartolomeo Ordones, Arturo Martini, Louise Bourgeois, Henry Moore, Arturo Dazzi and Carlo Sergio.