A few kilometres from the famous resort of Forte dei Marmi (the most fashionable in Versilia and Tuscany) the Apuan Alps crowned by snow-white peaks extend parallel to the sea coast. Visitors to Versilia for the first time often mistake these for snowy peaks, but the reality is that snow is seldom seen here, far from every winter. The snow-white peaks of the Apuan Alps owe their colour to the valuable marble mined there, known internationally as ‘Carrara marble‘ from the town of Carrara on the foothills. Forte dei Marmi (literally “Marble Fort”), a luxurious seaside resort founded in 1788 by the Grand Duke Leopold I of Tuscany for the export of marble blocks, also owes its name to the local marble.
But it is the county of Carrara that remains the most important centre for the extraction and processing of the famous “Carrara marble”, the fine white marble mined in the nearby Apuan Alps. The emblem of the town is the wheel with the motto “Fortitudo mea in rotā” (Latin: “my strength is in the wheel”). This coat of arms, always considered a representation of the wheel of a cart used to transport marble, is now more commonly associated with the figure of the Celto-Ligurian god Taranis, depicted with a lightning bolt in one hand and a wheel in the other. The name of the town of Carrara most probably comes from the Celtic word for stone (cairo), or Carraia, a word meaning quarry or stone quarry in Celtic/Ligurian. Today’s Carrara is built on the site of a settlement of marble quarry workers, founded by the Romans after their conquest of Liguria in the early years of the 2nd century B.C. The local marble in Roman times was called “Luni marble“, as it was exported by sea from the nearby port of Luni, an important Roman city which once stood at the mouth of the Magra River.
The city of Carrara was abandoned during the Dark Ages after the fall of the Roman Empire, but re-emerged in the 12th century amidst the pan-European historical boom of the time. Carrara was incorporated in 1235; subsequently, during the Middle Ages, it belonged to the Republics of Pisa and Genoa, the Dukes of Visconti of Milan and Florence until it finally became part of the Marquis of Malaspin. Carrara’s economy has always been linked to the extraction and processing of marble in all its varieties. Most European marble masterpieces are made of Carrara marble, but many architectural monuments (e.g. the Trajan Column and the Tower of Pisa, etc.) are also made of this material. The quarries of the Apuan Alps were probably already in use in the early Iron Age by the Ligurian tribes, but the marble quarrying process was really effective in the Roman era.
It was transported to Rome via the port of Luni, giving the marble its Latin name, “marmor lunensis”. The most ancient quarries in the Torano, Misella and Colonnata basins were exploited at that time, some of which, like Polvaccio and Mandria (Torano) and Canalgrande (Misella), are now fully exploited, while others, like La Tagliata (Misella) and Fossacava (Colonnata), are still in active use. In those days marble was extracted by hand, with slaves and criminals (including Christians) working in the quarries. To separate the blocks, natural cracks in the rock were used, into which wedges of fig tree were inserted and then moistened with water – their natural expansion enlarged the crack and detached the block.
This technology changed only at the end of the nineteenth century with the invention of the wire saw and the penetrating pulley, when manual labour was replaced by machine cutting of marble. Equally as difficult as the actual extraction of the marble was the lowering of the marble blocks from the steep, rocky mountainsides to the sea. The most ancient method of transportation was called “abbrivio” and consisted in having the boulder rolled down the slope without any control until it stopped on a bed of small debris. A slightly more advanced (but also dangerous method) “lizzatura“, used until the mid-twentieth century, consisted in lowering the block on wooden sled held by a system of sliding ropes, controlled by a “team” of twelve men. In the last decades of the nineteenth century, the transport of marble was organised by railway, built shortly after the unification of Italy. The “marble” railway was used for nearly a century, competing with the traditional “lizzatura”, ox-drawn carts, but could not compete with road transport and was dismantled in 1964.
In addition to marble, the Carrara mountains also boast a gastronomic speciality of their own, namely Italy’s most famous type of lard. It is called Lardo di Colonnata and is made from the fat of pigs whose hams are used to produce the country’s best “prosciutto” (raw ham) – prosciutto di Parma and di San Daniele. The lard is seasoned in a rectangular container hollowed out in a block of marble, lined with a layer of coarse sea salt and spices (fresh ground black pepper, peeled fresh garlic, rosemary and sage). Then the lard is laid out in a marble “bath” in layers, each layer poured over with salt and spices and covered with a marble slab. The curing period of lard in marble “tubs” under pressure – from 6 to 10 months.