The Museum of the Carrara Marble and Fossacava Archeological Site

The Museo del Marmo di Carrara e area archeologica di Fossacava is one of the two projects that won the in kind prize in kind promoted by Robilant Associati. Opened in Carrara in 1982, it has recently embarked on a new path that, in the expectations of the municipal administration, should lead it, with a new layout, to fulfil with ever greater effectiveness its natural mission as the main centre for the dissemination of the history of marble quarrying. The opening to the public, in 2021, of the archaeological park of the Roman quarry of Fossacava has then made it possible to create a single cultural centre dedicated to this fascinating subject.

The project ‘The Sounds of Marble’, submitted for the 2024 call for bids of the Foundation ‘Italy: Homeland of Beauty’, focuses on the intangible cultural heritage linked to the world of marble: the many and peculiar sounds that have always characterised the landscape of the marble basins in the Carrara area since the Roman age cannot but be at the centre of the Marble Museum's redevelopment activities.

In addition to the restoration of the digital archive created in the museum by Studio Azzurro in 2008, which provides access to written and video documents on the quarrymen's daily life, there will also be 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 joined to the tale of extreme ‘materiality’, made up of exhausting toil and great danger, that has characterised marble quarrying in all ages.

‘The presence of the project ‘The Sounds of Marble’, promoted by the Carrara Marble Museum, among the winners of the 2024 edition of the Fondazione's call for participants makes us particularly proud,’ says the Marble Museum team. The recognition, from someone who knows our country's cultural heritage in depth, is for us an important sign of the great value of the tangible and intangible heritage linked to the long history of marble quarrying in Carrara, from the Roman age to the present day’.