Incredible images tell the tale of the world’s most prized marble

At the foot of the striking marble quarries of the Apuar Alps in central Italy is the town of Colonnata (pictured above) – a quaint place known for its lard and quarry workers. Stone quarried outside the nearby city of Carrara, including the white marble quarry pictured below, is considered complete. the purest and most valuable in the world.

Before modern technology, enormous blocks of marble were transported by hand up the mountainside with cables, ropes and a sledge in a method called “lizzatura”, as recreated in the image below.

“Since the time of the Roman Empire, marble has been considered the best in the world,” says photographer Alessandro Gandolfi, who documented the story of the highly sought-after material in his project. The land of marble. “The best sculptors in the world, like Michelangelo, personally came to choose these marbles for their sculptures.”

Several centuries after the Italian Renaissance, marble remains a basic material for artists. Pictured above, students from the Academy of Fine Arts in Carrara first hone their sculpting skills in clay.

Beyond its use in art, Carrara marble is often pulverized and used as calcium carbonate to make paper, paint, fertilizers and products. toothpaste.

But the extraction of marble is not without its impact on the environment. “We’re pulling out a little too much marble today,” Gandolfi says. “If we continue at this rate, you will see the mountains completely destroyed in 500 years.”