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C.so Rosselli n.3, Carrara, 54033, Italy
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Cork tree in central square of Carrara!
Marble quarries, Colonnata, Carrara.
End product going to Japan for pillars
Workmen cutting squares of stone
Hi, 3 of us will be in Pisa from Nov 24 to 28, 2010 and want to spend one day in Carrara and the quarry. What is the best way to get there? Are there tour guides for the quarry? We'll plan to visit the museum, but we really want to see the quarry operations if that's possible.
Thank you for your kind response.
You will find information about visiting the quarry on its website:
http://www.carraramarble.it/english/marble_quarry_tour.html
where there is also a contact email for more information and, possibly, for a tour of the working part of the quarry.
I think you will need a car to access the other parts of the quarry itself....I don't think they are easily walkable.
I am struggling to find a bus connection (I'll keep looking). I can find none from Pisa itself:
http://www.cpt.pisa.it/orari/extra.htm
nor a regular service from a town which is easily accessible by train.
http://www.atnsrl.it/orari.php?idzona=1 for timetables from/to Carrara
http://www.atnsrl.it/orari.php?idzona=3 for 'extra-urban' bus times serving Carrara.
You can find train times, details and fares in English here:
http://trenitalia.it/homepage_en.html
There must be a solution, but I suspect you will need a car (or an organised tour of some sort) to visit the quarry properly.
Last March we toured the Carrara quarries with a local guide, Sara Paolini, she picked us up with her car at the train station & drove us around the docks, then up into the quarries. Sara speaks English & knows the history of the quarries & the area. Her email is sarapaolini@hotmail.com.
i highly recommend visiting the quarries - we rented a car and followed the signs to cave michelangelo - i think advance research is helpful - it is great to see where and how michelangelo interacted with the locals and how the marble of carrera was mined. you wind around to the top on narrow alleys and can see the mined areas, some outdoor musuems, and the CAVE. i was so impressed with this and think that you will as well. buona fortuna, buon viaggio.
Just wanted to say that we had a tour with Drssa Lucia Ambrosini (lucyvito@libero.it) and it was excellent. We visited a sculptor's workshop, the Fantiscritti quarry, ate the lard speciality of the quarry, saw various quarrying activities. We would have seen the outdoor marble museum as well, but it was closed due to cold and snow. (That's the breaks!)
The Civico Museo di Marmo in town complemented our tour.
It was all great and met one of our long-term goals, so thank you very much for your help.
I'm glad you managed to get something sorted out and enjoyed your visit. :-)
If you look at the churches of Tuscany, you find white marble, black marble, green marble and red marble. The white marble, which is the most abundant and famous, is from Carrara (the green is from Pisa, the black Massa, the red Siena??)
P.S. If you want to know how best to get here from Florence, I recommend the 12.57 train daily from Santa Maria Novella.
They keep digging out sections of the mountain. After all these years, apparently there is still more to dig. About 300,000 square meters are carved out yearly. Franco Barattini owns the three active quarries that marble is carved from. The colors are not only the famous white marble, but also about 50 other colors, besides granite in various colors.
The trucks do get up speed in going down hill and I would not want to get in their way. They could not stop very fast, if they tried to do so. The road is narrow and winding, also. Be careful. The trucks care carrying an average of 10 tons or more if I recall the figure right. Oh-by the way the drop off on the hillside is steep
This was a sculpture that has dedicated the effort to the men and oxen who used to work this mountain until not many years ago.
Cararra is the home of pure white marble quarries. This site has been in use for over 2000 years since the Roman era. It is a wonder marble is still being quarried after all these years. Here, Michelangelo used to visit to select marble for his sculptures. In fact, the marble for his "David" sculpture came from here. When you first see the mountains, you think there is snow covering them. However, when you come up close you find that is it really the white marble that is being quarried.
Once again, this was a stopping point on our grand Europen exchange tour organised by Kirkcaldy College of Technology. It was quite wonderful to be visiting an Italian city for more than a few hours. As guests of the City Council, we werec well looked after and I have the vague memory that a winde bottle was never emmpty when we ate or relaxed during the visit.
A visit to Carrara is incomplete without a visit to the marble quarries. Sadly, when we visited it was very wet - the 3 staff were very eagre to see the views - the 11 students stayed in the mini bus.
During a visit to the city hall, I have two amusing memories -
1. We took gifts for official hosts, being Scots we had a wide array of tartan items and whisky related products. During this visit there was a tartan tie left over and it was left on a table - 6 Italian officials eyed it up enviously each fondled it looked around and put it down....then one man we had not seen before walked up, picked up the tie and put it one...the others looked at him in amazement and he walked off!
2. The second memory from that visit was that during the official greeting reception; the senior lecturer got slightly carried away...and during a translated discussion with the Mayor, it some how came about he said that all 11 students had taken an Italian Class, and it was 1 hour each day! At this the Mayor became excited and very animated....I should say 1 student had attended one class on one evening prior to leaving Scotland. As the mayor became more interested in the groups linguistic skills, the rub finally came.......in broken English he asked......." giva me a one word...." one of our more drunken members very quickly chirped up with "piccolo bambino"...hooray another international success for Scottish Diplomacy.
The Sanctuary parish church is situated in Via Carriona in Carrara. Apart from some fine statuary and a magnificent altar inside, the bronze doors are really worth seeing. This image appears to be a visitation by angels to the dead Christ, although it may also refer obliquely to the death of marble quarry workers in the mountains around.
This image appears to be of a guardian angel floating above Carrara and the marble workers (not in the picture). It may, of couse, be Mary.
A wonderful sense of pathos is offered in the image of the dying Christ.
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Q: tours of Carrara quarry from Pisa? "Hi, 3 of us will be in Pisa from Nov 24 to 28, 2010 and want to spend one day in Carrara and the quarry. What is the best way to..."
A: "You will find information about visiting the quarry on its website: http://www.carraramarble.it/english/marble_quarry_tour.html where there is also a contact email..."
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