Another warn sunny day greeted us as we walked to the train station in the late morning to catch the train out to Carrara for a tour of the marble quarries. Prized for its unveined white color and fine crystaline structure, the marble has been extracted from these quarries for 2,200 years. The marble for Michelangelo's David and Pieta came from these quarries, as have countless statues from Roman times. There are approximately 165 quarries, about half are privately owned. The balance are owned collectively by the town of Carrara.
Luca picked us up at the train station and we joined three other folks for the tour. The drive through Avenza and Carrara was nice enough, with a brief pause at the post office. Built during Mussolini's rule, the building is clad entirely in marble including the two statues at the entrance representing the workman and the artisan.
The road to the quarries is publicly accessible, up to a point. We were fortunate that we pretty much had the quarries to ourselves that day. A worker had been killed in an accident the day before, so there was no work being done. Our first stop was at a small gift shop, where Luca demonstrated the progression of mining techniques, from hammers and chisels, to steel wire, to diamond intertwined steel cable. The marble is dense; that small chunk of marble in front of Luca weighs almost 90 pounds.
The quarries are connected by roads that go up, around, and through the mountains. Most are single lane, and some barely qualify as single lanes.
This was an unusual stop mid-tour. Lard tasting? It is not as disgusting as it may sound. The lard is pork back fat, rendered and seasoned, and cured in Carrara marble troughs for six months. Served on a slice of bread with some tomato; it is quite delicious.
This is "Five arch bridge" that we drove over to the lard tasting.
Looking across the valley, you can see the "hole" in the wall where they filmed parts of The Brutalist. Luca was able to sign on as crew, and shared pictures of Adrian Brodie and other actors as well as setting up for filming.
The tour had a permit to go beyond the public road and take us to parts of the quarry that would have otherwise been active work areas. This part was referred to as Michelangelo's quarry, where he sourced his marble centuries ago. The equipment is huge!
Blocks in waiting.
Cutting slabs. The first step is the yellow machine sawing out the bottom to about three meters in. then vertical holes are drilled at each end of the cut to run the diamond encrusted wire in a loop to make the vertical cut. lastly, the ends are sawn, followed by a machine that will force the crack open until the slab tips over onto a bed of gravel where it will be cut into smaller blocks.
In order to preserve the landscape and maximize output, some of the quarrying is done in tunnels. These tunnels are massive and extend for hundreds of meters under the mountain.
Close up of the diamond-tipped drill that is used for drilling holes for cutting the larger slabs. It was just sitting there in a small cart. We are so glad that it was a no-work day - I doubt we would have been able to spend so much time just wandering around.
The rain came in the afternoon and we were not able to explore the town for dinner. This was at Tattoria la Carrabacca, just south of the Florence train station.
2 comments:
That looks like such a cool tour! Sad that someone was killed the day before.
Amazing to think of how many statues and buildings were created from that stone.
Very cool! Marble quality really varies based on the the quarry location. I worked on a rehabilitation project for a building that was entirely clad in white marble originally from Marble, CO and a previous rehab project had value engineered the replacement pieces to instead be sourced out of China. The newer marble was very easy to spot due to it weathering poorly. Very interesting building material! So cool you got to see such an ancient place!
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