The Mountains of Carrara, also known as "The Marble Mountains" are located in Tuscany, 1.5 hours west-northwest of Florence. They are notable for the white or white-grey marble that's quarried here and where Leonardo Da Vinci personally chose the marble he wanted to use to create his masterpieces. "My strength is in the wheel" is the quote of Carrara which has to do with how they quarried the marble back in the days. The Marble Mountains are a must-see for the adventure seekers and for everyone interested in history, culture, architecture and landscape.
One of the higlights
This was the longest trip we did from where we were staying in Tuscany. We drove for about 2 hours and along the way we were thinking if it would be worth sitting in the car for so long.. Well, it was! It actually was one of the highlights from our whole Tuscany road trip!
Here you can see how the marble blocks are taken from the mountains. The blocks are huge and to know that back in the days they did everything by hand is mindblowing.
Marble tour in the Cave
We spend the whole afternoon in the mountains. Carrara itself has to be a very nice town, but we didn't had the chance to explore it. Instead, we went inside a cave with a large group of people to get to know more about the history and the process of the marble quarrying used to build the Pantheon in Rome and Leonardo Da Vinci's 'David' (which you can visit in the Galleria dell'Accadamia in Florence).
This was the entrance of the cave, not so impressive but it is impressive to know that the corridor is a few kilometers long (and dark) and is all been carved by hand. The walls inside the cave are very high and in all the corridors and open areas marble had been quarried.
Unfortunately we couldn't take any high quality pictures inside the cave because it was too dark but we'll leave that a surprise to experience it yourself! Tip: make sure to bring a jacket with you, it's cold and humid inside.
Open museum
Outside the cave there was this open museum where they had respresented the process of marble quarrying of the past through marble sculptures and original tools.
Demonstration of the process of cutting the marble back in the days
Spectacular views
The road through the mountains is beautiful. Although it's quite dangerous to stop along the way because of big trucks driving like crazy, we did stop for a minute to take a shot of this spectacular view from up there on the way back down!
Did we make you excited to explore "The Marble Mountains" in Carrara? We can higly recommend it! And did you know that Carrara is located 15 to 20 minutes from the sea and only 45 minutes from Cinque Terre and the Amalfi Coast? :-)
