Museo del Marmo di Carrara e l'Area Archeologica di Fossacava

The Museo del Marmo di Carrara has recently embarked on a path of growth that will lead it, with a new layout, to increasingly fulfil its natural mission as the main centre for the dissemination of the history of marble quarrying. The opening of the archaeological park of the Roman quarry of Fossacava to the public in 2021 has then made it possible to create a single cultural centre dedicated to this fascinating subject. White marble is the material of the gods, and many works of art and architecture have been realised with it.

It is in this white material that Michelangelo sculpted David and the vast underground rooms in Santiago Calatrava's World Trade Center terminal in New York are clad with this marble. A new project (The Sounds of Marble) linked to memory and sound has been conceived: the many peculiar noises that have always characterised the landscape of the marble basins in the Carrara area since the Roman age will be at the centre of the Museum's redevelopment activities. 

The restoration of the digital archive realised in the museum by Studio Azzurro in 2008, allows for the use of written and video documents on the quarrymen's daily life. This will be added to the reconstruction of the ancient, modern and contemporary soundscapes of the quarries, an activity that has already begun with the continuously updated work ‘Archivio sonoro apuano’ by Alessio Mosti. The museum will thus be able to offer its visitors an immersive experience, in which the immateriality of the sounds will be united with the tale of extreme ‘materiality’, made up of gruelling toil, great danger and great beauty, that has characterised marble quarrying in all epochs. The aim is to revive a great story, which has no equal in the world, moving deftly from the ancient to the contemporary.