Today, we joined the Art and Landscape Architecture students to a trip to Carrara. As I’m sure you know, Carrara is internationally famous for its many marble quarries, and it is especially renown for the high quality of its white marble pieces. Many of Michelangelo’s, Leonardo Da Vinci’s, and Bernini’s best known sculpture were done on Carrara’s marble for instance.
Carrara is about 3 ½ hours from Cortona, but worth the trip. We took a tour of the “Cave di Marmo”, which brought us ~600m inside the mountain and ~450m beneath its peak. The guided tour described the process of mining 35 ton marble pieces, and it gave the students a first hand chance to visit the mines where some of their own pieces are coming from. The high-light of the tour came when the guide asked us to scream from the top of our lungs and instructed to pay attention to our echo. It was amazing!
We didn’t have much time to roam the streets — the Faculty had to be back in time to attend a dinner with UGA’s President, who was visiting the Cortona program for a couple of days. Carrara is mostly a mining town, but not without its charm. As expected, marble is used everywhere – on sidewalks, curbs, columns, window sill, door frames, etc. We saw several very nice antique shops and interesting buildings. Best of all, the ocean is only a short drive from the Piazza del Duomo.
1 response so far ↓
1 Mike Patel // Jul 2, 2007 at 2:00 pm
Sounds like a great place… But how’s the cuisine?
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