Shortly before our holiday in Italy, a friend told me about a huge marble quarry near Carrara, just a few kilometres off the motorway in the mountains, on our way to Tuscany. Photos on the internet had made me curious, but the sight on the spot was not only impressive but frightening: the quarrying has already eaten deep into the mountains. How long they will still yield material, nobody knows – in a few decades some peaks could have disappeared.
Flying between cables and radio dead spots
Up went the drone, past cables and with treacherous radio dead spots between the mountains. From above, almost abstract pictures emerged. Anyone laying marble slabs at home might think twice after these pictures.
The last view over the quarry
With the last few per cent of battery I flew over one more mountain top, and that last view, the last photo, has stayed with me. Crazy – that's all I can say. Marble has been quarried in the mountains above Carrara since Roman times, when it was called “marmor lunense”; more marble has come from the area’s more than 650 quarry sites than from any other place in the world.
A whole mountain in steps: the marble quarry between the dark peaks above Carrara.As if sliced off, the terraced summit rises above the haze, the coast beyond.Almost abstract from above: diggers and marble blocks on the white quarry floor.Switchbacks climb to a summit being taken apart terrace by terrace.Where the forest ends, the marble begins – a red roof the only splash of colour on the slope.White terraces under the clouds – the quarrying has eaten deep into the mountains.An orange digger among stacked blocks – a toy on a sea of white.Carrara twice: quarrying on the ridge and white terraces deep in the valley.Wide quarry steps on which the machines almost disappear.In the white pit: machines, stacks of blocks and the marks of the saws.Blue sky, green slope – and in the middle the quarry that turns the mountain white.A deep marble chamber with walls as smooth as if cut, blocks and a digger at the bottom.Steep white walls – this is what a mountain looks like from inside once it is cut away.Yellow machines in the round pit, as small as game pieces.Quarry after quarry: the mountains above Carrara hold more than 650 extraction sites.White quarry faces and hairpins under a blue sky – marble, mined here since Roman times.
