I’m well used to seeing mountain peaks around me by this point. Throughout the walk, the Swiss Alps, the Ligurian Alps, and the Apuan Alps have consistently framed one side of the horizon, typically blocking out sunrise for an extra hour or so. Today, though, those mountains suddenly looked very different.
They appeared to be snow covered.
Now, were this winter, that would merit little comment. But it’s late August and most of the mountain springs have long run dry. The earth has been sun dried for months. Any snow long ago left the picture.
No, this is something very different. This is marble–the quarries of famed Carrara marble. And what I’m seeing is one peak after another that has been literally defaced. If the terracing of the Cinque Terre hills seems like an act of humans living in harmony with nature, this excavation terracing is open warfare, and a one-sided battle at that.
I spent most of the day pondering those ghostly mountaintops, in part because they’re fascinating, but also because the bulk of the walk was rather tedious. There are two ways to get from Sarzana to Pietrasanta. The coastal option moves largely in a straight line, almost directly alongside the Mediterranean, before cutting inland to the destination. The problem, though, is that an awful lot of resort development has been crammed into that “almost,” meaning that despite spending hours walking along the coast, you rarely actually see the damn thing, let alone have access for a quick dip. By contrast, the interior approach takes a meandering, circuitous approach, including two hilltop climbs through vineyards. While this results in some delightful views–you definitely see more of the Mediterranean on this approach than you do on the other–it also involves many hours spent twisting and turning in the widening suburbs. I opted for the inland approach this time, but only because I did the coast last walk.
But those white peaks stayed with me throughout, and they were top of mind in Pietrasanta, where a plaque on one building identifies it as the place where a middle-aged Michelangelo, on March 10, 1518, signed a contract with Donato Benti to work on the facade of Florence’s Basilica di San Lorenzo. He was already quite familiar with the area, having traveled to the Carrara quarries in 1497 and 1503. In that first visit, he was focused on acquiring stone for the Pietà, housed today in St. Peter’s, and the Polvaccio quarry where he purchased it later changed its name to Michelangelo’s quarry.
Alas, buying the marble was the easy part. Getting it transported off the mountain and onto Rome took considerably more time. In the end, more than half a year passed before the marble arrived, by which point the patron had already died.
The 1503 visit was prompted by a contract signed with the Opera del Duomo in Florence to create statues of the twelve apostles for the cathedral. While that venture ended poorly, Michelangelo landed squarely on his feet, with a substantial, new contract with Pope Julius II to construct his tomb. Perhaps this was a savvier choice, given how long Michelangelo’s previous efforts had taken. The challenge this time, though, was the scale–Michelangelo needed 34 cartloads of marble, each of which worked out to roughly 850 kilograms. Then he arranged for a further shipment of 60 more cartloads.
By the time all of that marble had reached Rome, the Pope decided it would be bad luck to have his tomb built during his life, so he reneged on the agreement and left Michelangelo with the shipping bills. Michelangelo fled Rome on horseback.
We’ll leave him there.
In Pietrasanta, I stayed in the pilgrim hostel in Casa La Rocca, with ten cyclists. The group of eight were friendly enough, but entirely on their own schedule. The other two, though, started talking with me about their travels in the area, including a ride through Carrara. The pictures they had were incredible. The husband explained that when they finish excavating marble from the face of the mountain, they actually tunnel inward as well. He showed me a photo of a large truck moving into what otherwise might appear to be a small hole in the mountainside. The scale of operations is hard to believe.
“It’s almost beautiful,” I said. “And this has been happening for centuries now!” He turned to me and said, “well, the Romans came to Carrara for marble as well.” “Millennia, then!” “However,” he added bluntly, “more marble has been extracted in the past half-century than all the previous years combined.”
I found that stunning, but the facts check out. What for years was a significant but relatively small-scale artisan operation has been thoroughly industrialized over the past three decades in particular. Four to five million tons of marble are exported annually from Carrara, with the majority of it going to China. Very little of the marble excavated actually remains in Italy these days. All along the walk in this stage, from Avenza to Pietrasanta, I passed marble processing shops, many of them slicing the large blocks into thin sheets, and those too are part of this larger industry.
The town of Carrara has benefited surprisingly little from this surge in production. On the plus side, a modern highway was built to ship the marble direct to the port. No horse carts required, nor any need for heavy trucks to belch exhaust throughout the town following the old road to the port. On the flipside, though, the automation of many parts of the mining process has resulted in a significant loss of jobs for local residents. Many have moved elsewhere, resulting in a town population that has hit its post-war low point.
Most jarring to me is what happens to much of that acclaimed Carrara marble. Instead of being transformed into timeless sculpture, or cathedral columns, it is largely being ground down and turned into calcium carbonate, which is then used in toothpaste, paper, and paint.
Mountains are being torn down to make toothpaste. I’d stop brushing in solidarity, if that didn’t sound so horrible.
