Italy - The Marble Basin of Carrara

The protected area of Alpi Apuane, which are defined "Alps" due to their morphology, are a mountain system that goes from the north-west of Tuscany and spreads over a surface of 400 square km. The mountains are formed by a dorsal which runs parallel to the Tirrenian coast and raises up to 2000 meters. It spreads over the lands of the provinces of Lucca and Carrara. To safeguard and valorise the area, Tuscany set up a park in 1985.Facing the inlands, the historical centre does not appear, because it is hidden in a bowl of green hills, at the bottom of a piedmont bench. The territory, from the sea, presents first a clear-cut hill belt that is followed by tall Alpi Apuane, where the park is, and where a complex system of paths for mountain lovers is present too: the mountain is ripped by marble quarries that pour down river into ravaneti white casting which give a one-time and peculiar feature to the sight, generating a Mineral Natural Park of high beauty. Carrara quarries continue on the mountains over the city, precisely inside the so-called agri, i.e. in highland forests and pasture-lands which once belonged to inhabitants of villages below. The large scale exploitation of Carrara quarries begins in the I century A.C., when the region was dominated by the Romans. From the ancient extracting activity many traces still remain: there are about 30 quarries from Roman age, and many cutting side from renaissance. Notable is the fact that quarries from Roman age are present only in the basins of Carrara and not in other extractive sites of Alpi Apuane: and that in the neighbourhood of Colonnata the biggest and more articulated roman quarry of Italy, or even of the world, is preserved. Many natural environments cause the birth, the development and the characteristics of a civilization: the sea, the mountains, the countryside, each of them characterises respectively marine, agro-pastural, farming civilizations. Territorial areas in which those civilizations developed are various as well, even if they maintain the fundamental characters that once were of distinction . While the "Marble civilization" was born, is still alive and looks at the future within the only and clear cut territorial area represented by the marble basins of Carrara.