{"id":2937,"date":"2011-09-06T21:54:50","date_gmt":"2011-09-06T21:54:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.selectstone.com\/?p=2937"},"modified":"2013-09-05T10:54:16","modified_gmt":"2013-09-05T16:54:16","slug":"carrara-marble-capital-of-the-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.selectstone.com\/journal\/history\/2011\/carrara-marble-capital-of-the-world\/","title":{"rendered":"Carrara &#8211; Marble Capital of the Ancient and Modern World"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft\" style=\"font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: normal; color: #888888; padding-bottom: 40px;\" title=\"Carrara map\" alt=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/www.selectstone.com\/journal\/images\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/09\/Carrara-map.png?aoe=1&amp;q=100&amp;w=281&amp;h=264&amp;hash=90acad4711b3ab72da74fb7cb72ccc59\" \/>Few places in the world\u00a0are as\u00a0rich\u00a0in stone history as Carrara in northern Tuscany, Italy.\u00a0 Located\u00a0where\u00a0the Apuan Alps meet the\u00a0Ligurian Sea, Carrara\u00a0combines enormous marble deposits\u00a0with\u00a0nearby access to\u00a0shipping on the Mediterranean.\u00a0 This has made Carrara both a major center for marble\u00a0quarrying and carving\u00a0as well as a\u00a0fabrication center for\u00a0many other stones\u00a0from throughout the world.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright\" style=\"font-size: 0.75em; line-height: 1.75em;\" title=\"Monte Sagro - Carrara quarries2\" alt=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/www.selectstone.com\/journal\/images\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/09\/Monte-Sagro-Carrara-quarries2.jpg?aoe=1&amp;q=100&amp;w=281&amp;h=211&amp;hash=96ec209b8378a295965d2f2ce61de4f3\" \/>Marble is limestone that has been heated, compressed and recrystallized into a denser form.\u00a0 In Carrara, Jurassic-age limestones were compressed and deeply buried during collisions of the African and European plates.\u00a0 The resultant marbles were later exposed by uplift and erosion\u00a0of the northern Apuan Alps outside Carrara.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft\" style=\"font-size: 0.75em; line-height: 1.75em; padding-bottom: 40px;\" title=\"trans_mrbl_via_wagon_carrara_italy-1\" alt=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/www.selectstone.com\/journal\/images\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/09\/trans_mrbl_via_wagon_carrara_italy-1.jpg?aoe=1&amp;q=100&amp;w=307&amp;h=200&amp;hash=3e6d5f57fdf2f350c46a6b5ce6243602\" \/>The Romans\u00a0began quarrying marble\u00a0near Carrara in the 2nd\u00a0century BC.\u00a0 Marble blocks were carted to the nearby port of Luni\u00a0for shipment\u00a0throughout the Mediterranean.\u00a0 In Rome, Carrara marble was used in the Pantheon, Trajan&#8217;s Column, and many\u00a0other structures and sculptures.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright\" style=\"font-size: 0.75em; line-height: 1.75em;\" title=\"David_by_Michelangelo-1\" alt=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/www.selectstone.com\/journal\/images\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/09\/David_by_Michelangelo-1.jpg?aoe=1&amp;q=100&amp;w=288&amp;h=203&amp;hash=4afc4aca2cc7e72e2dee7d9dcc56bd5c\" \/>Marble production declined after the fall of Rome but picked up again during the Renaissaince.\u00a0 In the 15th century, Michaelangelo hand-selected blocks of the purest\u00a0statuario\u00a0marble at Carrara and had them carted to the coast and then barged up the Arno River\u00a0to Florence where he carved his David.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft\" style=\"font-size: 0.75em; line-height: 1.75em; padding-bottom: 80px;\" title=\"carrara-005-1\" alt=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/www.selectstone.com\/journal\/images\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/09\/carrara-005-1.jpg?aoe=1&amp;q=100&amp;w=302&amp;h=227&amp;hash=bc33a0c9a89963721531b863490b3c35\" \/>Quarrymen (cavatori)\u00a0and stone carvers (scarpellini)\u00a0in Carrara have a long history of supporting\u00a0 radical labor organizations.\u00a0 Violent revolutionists, expelled from other European countries in the late 1800&#8217;s, migrated to Carrara and founded anarchist groups.\u00a0Carrara is the birthplace of the International Federation of Anarchists.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A geological and historical mecca in northern Tuscany.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7246,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,2,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2937","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles","category-history","category-stone-facts"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/www.selectstone.com\/journal\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/Carrara-map.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.selectstone.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2937","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.selectstone.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.selectstone.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.selectstone.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.selectstone.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2937"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"http:\/\/www.selectstone.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2937\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7467,"href":"http:\/\/www.selectstone.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2937\/revisions\/7467"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.selectstone.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7246"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.selectstone.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2937"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.selectstone.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2937"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.selectstone.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2937"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}