Behind Carrara for bathroom
Behind Carrara and the neighboring towns of Massa and Pietrasanta lie deposits some 16 miles long, 6 miles wide and a mile and a half deep. In them are 40 kinds of precious marble, an alphabet of color and texture nuances, from swirled gray Arabescato to zebra-striped Zebrino.The villages and towns of the region are themselves monuments to marble. Carrara's medieval center, for instance, is chock-a-block with it: Churches, theaters and aristocratic palazzi were built from choice white stones.
Humble houses were cobbled together from leavings stuccoed over and painted in pastel tones of pink, ochre and yellow. Squares such as the handsome Piazza Alberica are paved with marble blocks. Sculptures of lions, giants, statesmen, heroes and quarry workers are scattered around, huge marble chess pieces on a marble board.
Push open a door along any of old Carrara's warren of streets and a marble entrance hall and stairway await you, with marble banisters and busts. The Garrione River that runs through Carrara on the way to the nearby Mediterranean is a quivering stream of white chips and milky water. Bathrooms, restaurants and cafes are clad in marble, their tables marble-topped.
Even the area's culinary specialty, Colonnata lard, is salt-cured between slabs of Carrara white marble. The marble gives it a peculiar, powdery taste.
Most impressively, though, every inch of the city's Romanesque cathedral of Sant'Andrea is made of the stuff: The facade alternates bands of white and black marble, symbolic of good and evil, day and night, life and death. As one pundit told me, marble follows the locals from the baptismal font to the tombstone.
Brutal beauty
What I love about Carrara's landscape is its brutal beauty. Systematic devastation has inadvertently wrought man-made majesty in a stunning natural setting. Seven hundred years ago the poet Dante wrote of Aronta, the dreaded Etruscan soothsayer, who had lived a thousand years earlier "in a grotto among whitest marble" in the mountains above Carrara.
The scenery looks Dante-esque to this day: Hilltop villages such as Bedizzano, Colonnata and Vergheto perch over gaping ravines set to swallow them. Isolated houses occasionally disappear, engulfed by the vortex of quarries. When rain sweeps the region - as it did during my last visit - the rivers run white, churning up a dense fog that cloaks the jagged hills and dampens the staccato percussion of countless pneumatic drills.
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Signatures of Granites
Because of its hardness and comparative cheapness in relation to marble, granite is often used to make kitchen countertops. A granite countertop can be cut in any shape, and it is virtually unscratchable.
Kitchen Counters
The central island, positioned asymmetrically in the room, accommodates a structural column and contrasts its verticality with the intersecting planes of the dining and work counters.
Signatures of Granites
Because of its hardness and comparative cheapness in relation to marble, granite is often used to make kitchen countertops. A granite countertop can be cut in any shape, and it is virtually unscratchable.
Kitchen Counters
The central island, positioned asymmetrically in the room, accommodates a structural column and contrasts its verticality with the intersecting planes of the dining and work counters.