Recently we had the wonderful opportunity to go to see where the most beautiful of all marbles in quarried, Carrara, Italy! When first passing the mountains of Tuscany we thought we saw snow on the mountain sides, but the altitude didn’t seem high enough and it was a sultry 90 plus degrees out! As we got closer, we realized that the white that we saw on the face of the mountain was in fact MARBLE!
White Carrera and Calcutta are the two types of marble that exist in abundance on these mountains and we were fortunate enough to get an up close look at it all. Carrara marble has been used for sculptures and buildings in Italy since ancient Roman times. Some notable pieces done in this marble are Michelangelo’s David as well as Trajan’s Column and the Pantheon.
Not only did we visit the mountain side itself, we visited the fabricator who processes the blocks into slabs and prepares them for transport to locations all over the world! It was a fascinating trip to get to see the process of harvesting the blocks from the mountain, cutting them into slabs and of course the finished result in timeless works such as the David!