Carrara - part 2

I don't have much to say about this posting. It's mainly pictures of the mountains above Carrara and some of the exterior quarries.


That is not snow in the mountains. It's all white marble. Marble comes in many different colors, but Carrara (and the surrounding area including Pietrasanta) is famous for its white marble.


The Romans favored Carrara's white marble. They used it for many things including the Pantheon and Trajan's Column.


It was also very popular around the time of the Renaissance. Michelangelo used it to create his David.


Unfortunately these pictures aren't really showing how beautiful it was up in the mountains.


Here you can start to see the exterior marble excavations.


I'll show the interior excavations in my next posting.


John told us that this area wasn't worked on for a long time until modern technologies allowed them to quarry further down.


I loved watching the machinery at work. They look like toys. I wanted to play with them.


As we walked up into the mountains (out of the back side of a cave that will be in my next posting) we saw that everything was covered in layers of white marble dust. My shoes (and maybe my lungs) were covered with it.