Carrara is a city in the Massa Carrara province of Tuscany, Italy, famous for the white or blue_gray marble quarried there. It is on the Lavensa river, some 60 miles west northwest of Florence. As of 1991, the population was 61,197 people.
In addition to the marble quarries, the city has accademies of sculpture and fine arts and a museum of statuaries and antiquities. The local marble is exported around the world, and marble from elsewhere is also fashioned and sculpted commercially here.
The close bond between Carrara and its famous marble quarries dates back to ancient times. The word "Carrara" likely comes from the ancient term "Kar" (stone). Ancient Romans would quarry the marble, load it onto ships at the port of Luni and take it to Rome by sea.
The municipality of Carrara was first established in 1235. Over the centuries it was ruled by Pisa (1235), Lucca (1322), Genoa (1329) and Milan (1343). After the death of Filippo Maria Visconti of Milan in 1477 Carrara was fought over by Tommaso Campogregoso, lord of Sarzana, and the Malaspina family.
The marble was derived from the quarries of Mount Pentelicus in Attica.
Carraramarble is better known than any of the Greek marbles, inasmuch as it constitutes the stone invariably employed by the best sculptors of the present day.
Marbles of this age are worked in Derbyshire and Yorkshire, in the neighbourhood of Bristol, in North Wales, in the Isle of Man, and in various parts of Ireland.
Marble is capable of taking a high polish and is used principally for statuary and for building purposes.
The distinctive luster of statuary marble is caused by light penetrating a short distance into the stone and then being reflected from the surfaces of inner crystals.
Carrara marble—which occurs abundantly in the Apuan Alps of Italy and is quarried in the region of Carrara, Massa, and Serravezza—was used in Rome for architectural purposes in the time of Augustus, the first emperor, but the finer varieties of sculptural marble were discovered later.
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