Carrara is a picturesque foothill town in the foothills of the Apuan Alps, particularly famous for the extraction of high-quality white marble, which has served as the foundation stone for many monuments throughout Italy.
Carrara Marble Mines
Carrara marble (often transliterated into English as "Carrara") is a world-famous term, mainly due to its exceptional quality and the huge reserves that the Apuan Alps still harbour. This is why the mountains are often referred to as the "Marble Mountains".
Marble mining in Carrara began in Roman times and has continued uninterruptedly ever since. Carrara's marble was made famous by the sculptor Michelangelo, for example, and most of the important monuments in northern Italy are made of white marble. One of the first really important buildings is the Cathedral of the Assumption in nearby Pisa.
Nowadays, Carrara marble is mainly used for various tiles, floors, window sills, facade cladding and sculpture. Among contemporary buildings, Carrara marble is used, for example, on the Grande Arche in La Defensa, Paris, the Sheikh Zayed Mosque in Abu Dhabi and the Opera House in Oslo, Norway.
The marble mines are located in a huge lens-shaped terrace more than 10 km long and up to 400 metres thick, and their expansion is possible for at least decades to come.
A visit to the marble mines
You can easily reach the marble mines directly by road. There are several mines in the Carrara area, and all active ones can be reached, parked in the official public parking lots (free of charge) and photographed.
No need to deal with any permits or pay admission fees, just drive your car to the places the road signs allow you to go.
A great experience, for example, is to drive along the Galleria Ponti di Vara road, which cuts through the marble mountains through long tunnels and bridges that offer spectacular views. This road is only one-way, as 2 cars could not avoid the tunnels, but it is open to the public without the need for a permit.
The unforgettable experience, however, is directly visiting the active mines and the bowels of the mountains. There are several tourist agencies operating in Carrara, which will take you through the mines partly on foot, but for the most part in large off-road jeeps, which can take you to the hard to reach places.
- MarmoTour - A tour of the active mines in the Cava di Ravaccione area, minibuses only about 2 km from the car park, the whole guided tour takes about 1.5 hours and costs 15 eur and the price does not include the transfer from Carrara, it is necessary to drive here
- Details on www.marmotour.com
- Carrara Marble Tour - A much more comprehensive mine tour including an off-road jeep ride through several tunnels and around the active Fantiscritti mine. The whole tour takes 3-4 hours and includes a transfer from Carrara. The price is 65 eur.[/translate] However, there is also a 50-minute tour of one mine with a jeep ride without transfer to/from Carrara for the price of 12 eur.
- Details on www.carraramarbletour.it
Mine tours are only available from approximately March to October.
How to get there
The central part of the mines (Ravaccione and Fantiscriti) can only be reached directly by car, which is best rented at Pisa airport. Carrara can be easily reached by taking the A12 motorway, after which you have to drive through the whole of Carrara and continue up the hills following the signs that will direct you to the different mines.
Carrara can be reached easily and very often by Trenitalia train on the main line Genoa - La Spezia - Pisa, where trains run 2-3 times per hour.
Tickets for regional services can be bought at the ticket machine just before departure and are very cheap (for example, to Pisa you pay 5,80 eur). The station is called Carrara-Avenza and is about 4km from the centre, but there are public buses, see below.
You can only get to Colonnata by bus, but the views are also breathtaking. The L50 line runs from the main bus station, Carrara Ospedale, right in the historic centre. The bus runs about once an hour.
Bus lines 70 and 72 run from Carrara-Avenza station to the centre of Carrara.
A ticket for the city bus costs 1,50 eur and can be bought at any newsagent, you must then mark it in the yellow marker on the bus.
Accommodation
If you want to combine a visit to the marble mines with a visit to the small but very pretty historic centre of Carrara, or even the beaches of Marina di Carrara, then it is definitely worth staying here for at least 1 night.
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