#Quarry shooting blocks out technic driver

It is also where Michelangelo came to find his marble slabs. Fantiscritti is the most famous of the ex-Roman city of Luni as attested by many remains found there. In the Carrara marble basin, three quarry areas are delimited: Torano, Colonnata and Fantiscritti. Thinking about the tons of marble used all over the world for millennia, between the slope quarries, the pit quarries and the underground ones of which we only see the entrances, we are surprised that there are still mountains standing here!Īccording to the excavators, there is enough marble for at least another 500 years as it continues deep down in the earth, up to two kilometres below sea level. Around Carrara, the marble is white and what is special is that the geological structure is such that the marble deposits extend over large distances in this ancient group of mountains that was formed 190 million years ago. The colour of the marble depends on the sediments: in Italy there are the pink marbles of Lucca, the green marbles of the Aosta Valley, and the black marbles of La Spezia to name only a few. More specifically, limestone constituted mostly by calcium carbonate crystals undergoes a second crystallization because of high pressure and temperature caused by the movement of the tectonic plates when the Apuan Mountains were formed. How is marble formed & what is so special in Carrara?īasically, limestone is transformed in marble under high temperature & pressure. In the distance, the white of the statuario marble or the highest quality of pure white marble used by sculptors such as Michelangelo and found only in the Fantiscritti quarries denotes compared to the closer grey marble. In the middle of the bright white gold, yellow and red heavy earthmoving machines that look like toys amongst the monumental quarries extract the marble with breath-taking views over the entire Apuan Alps and the Ligurian Sea. We are heading to Quarry number 83 Canalgrande Alto, at an altitude of almost 1,000 meters above sea level. Big lorries, whether loaded or unloaded do the same.

#Quarry shooting blocks out technic driver

The 4×4 keeps gaining altitude, and the curves are so sharp that the driver needs to negotiate some of the hair pins with a three-point manoeuvre. The road becomes very steep as we make progress amongst some of the 30 open-air active quarries of the Fantiscritti quarry yard. We park the car to hop on a four-wheel drive Land Rover Defender. A few kilometres further, past the Ponti di Vara (Vara Bridge), we let some trucks, loaded with 35-ton blocks of marble, pass as they are heading down to the coast for the stones to be shipped. The road has turned into a one-way used mostly by heavy trucks rushing up to the quarries. The peaks eventually reveal their true nature: the open quarries of white Carrara marble. From the city of Carrara, the winding road gains altitude before the first narrow tunnels appear.

From the Greek word marmaros that means shiny stone, marble has remained a noble material over the centuries.įrom the Italian coastal road linking Genoa to Lucca, in a 30☌ heat, the 1,000-meter (3,000 feet) high peaks of the Apuan Alps seem covered in snow.

The white gold of Carrara… This marble has been renowned all over the world for millennia, from the Romans to the most talented sculptors of the Renaissance and today’s exclusive interior decorators.