When Sally and I passed through Carrara a few weeks ago, going to and from Cinque Terre, we regretted not having the time to go up into the mountains to see how the marble was mined. We were on a schedule, and on a train that did not extend its tracks up the mountainside. But, now, with a car and an extra day, we were in a position to go see the marble extraction operations.
We did not rush out of our accommodations this morning. We took our time, had breakfast, packed a lunch and retreated to the car about 9:00 am. It was only about a 20 minute drive to Carrara, then an additional 10 minutes out of town to the beginning of the mine tours. Sally had done the research the night before and had found a couple of inexpensive tours that would give us a look at the 2000+ year old mining project. We drove up a steep and switchbacking road to a place where tours were assembling, but discovered the tour we had read about was down another fork in the road we had passed. We drove back down a switchback or two, took the other fork, and were soon confronted with a one lane road that entered a tunnel. With Sally cringing in the back, hoping we did not meet an oncoming car, we drove through the dark tunnel for 3/4 of a mile and emerged in the adjacent valley. Heading up it, we soon arrived at the tour we had read about.
At this point we knew nothing about how they mine marble, so anything we learned was new. We found the tour was €10 each and lasted about an hour. As it turned out, the tour we were on was one of the only subterranean marble mine in the area. We loaded into 7 passenger vans. We noticed that the floor inside the van was thick with white rock powder, as was the entire outside of the van. We immediately entered a tunnel very similar to the one we had driven through 45 minutes earlier. Soon, the tunnel opened up into a huge cavern. However, this cavern was not natural, as could be seen by the absolutely straight, flat and vertical walls and the perfectly flat floor and ceiling. This cavern was formed from cutting blocks of marble from the walls, floor and ceiling and removing them to market.
We got an explanation from the tour guide about the mining operation. Only three people work at this. We learned about diamond rope saws, expanding pillows to move the blocks and the price of €7,000 a ton for this very pure white marble that was found in this man made cave. As it was Saturday, mining operations were not occurring, but the equipment was all sitting right where the workers had left it Friday night. One of the advantages of this underground mine is the constant temperature, 55ยบ, summer, fall, winter and spring. And due to the moisture in the cave, there is no marble dust floating around.
When done with the tour, they drove us back to the entrance. We turned in our reflective vests and turned our attention to the outside tour about 40 yards away. This tour was also €10 each. We signed up. In this tour your load into a Land Rover and drive the steep and narrow mining road to the top of the mountain and see the mining operation to remove the marble.
About noon, we loaded into the vehicles and bumped and crawled up the rough switchbacks to about 3500’ above sea level to the top of the mountain. From here we could see the extent of the mining operations and also close up the adjacent mines. Our tour guide gave us the details of marble extraction, not too different from what we had learned in the underground tour. Here, it was the scale of the operations and the composition of the mountains that were amazing. It is hard to conceive, but the entire ridge we were on, which included three parallel valleys was made entirely of solid marble. The miners were simply slicing off slabs of the mountain, loading them on trucks and bumping them down the very steep and switchbacking roads to market. Although the equipment used today speeds the process up considerably from 200 years ago, the process has been going on here for over 2000 years. If not regulated, these mountains would soon disappear and be spread across the world as kitchen countertops, roadside curbs, paving stones, bathroom walls and statues. But, someone with a little foresight saw that if the mountains were removed, it would change the weather patterns in the area and perhaps the entire region. Companies are allowed to remove the sides of the mountains to a point, but the top of the mountain must remain intact, to act as moisture and weather catchers. All of the highest peaks still poke up into the sky, but there flanks are now near vertical walls of shining marble newly exposed to the elements after the outer layers had been sliced off.
We bumped back down the road to finish the tour, then drove toward Carrara and a store to buy some lunch making materials. We found a Conad open on this Saturday afternoon. We piled back into the car with our meats, cheeses, breads, sodas and fruits and headed back toward our room.
Sally had wanted to see the marble being carved, and was looking for a studio or workshop as we slowly drove through town. As we were leaving Carrara, she spotted what looked like some marble carvings through an open gate. We did a u-turn at the roundabout and entered the yard. Here we found exactly what she was looking for. It was a “sculpture garden” similar to what we imagined Lorenzo the Magnificent’s to be back in the 1470-1490s at the birth of the renaissance. We learned that an older man in his 70’s owned the property, about an acre and encouraged artists to work in this open area, under tarps and hastily constructed buildings to keep the rain off. There were about 5 artists at work in various corners of the yard. One man was chiseling on a life sized statue of a hiker, carved from absolutely pure white Carrara marble (the €7000/ton variety). In another corner a woman in her early 30s was creating velociraptor dinosaurs in fiberglass from a series of molds she had created from her plaster model. A Korean man in his early 30’s was in a side shed sculpting a piece of pure white marble into a modern piece of art. We talked with each, and they were happy to share their work and ideas with us. Sally videoed the man chiseling on the hiker statue. It was fun to see how the marble is worked, especially with modern tools, an pneumatic impact hammer and attached chisel.
After 45 minutes of touring the grounds and talking with the artists, we drove back to our room, ate lunch, relaxed a bit, then headed for the beach for a swim. Although Jeff did not accompany Sally and I last night, he was with us today as we returned to the same sliver of public beach, much more crowded on this Saturday late afternoon than last evening, and swam in the Mediterranean for half an hour with us.
Back to the room, a repeat of last night’s dinner, plus some variations, and another day had passed us by.
We had received a text from Bill and Pat after our return from the marble mines telling us Joel was doing better. They were on their way to the wedding site in Tuscany, driving from Frankfurt. They said they would return to Frankfurt for the next surgery on Joel’s foot. That date and time is up in the air, depending on how well his foot and health are progressing. We will learn more tomorrow evening when we see Bill, Pat and the rest of the Caldwell family at the wedding site in Tuscany.
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