Today was the day trip to the Carrara marble open air quarry and mine. We drove by bus to the town of Carrara, and then scaled the mountain on concerningly thin, curvy roads until eventually making it to the museum. After the museum, we used land rover SUVs with big tires and a lift kit to scale the mountain even more, still not reaching the top. The sheer amount of time spent driving up this mountain, and being able to see the mine from miles away, really put into perspective just how huge of an operation they have going on here. I did not expect to see massive tractor trailers full of thousands of pounds of marble driving up and down the mountain on tiny roads, I really hope those trucks’ brakes get serviced frequently.
Seeing the quarry in person really changed my perspective on a lot of ancient Roman architecture and design. The biggest reason being how all of this stuff was built without a shred of modern machinery. Workers spent their stars to stars shift cutting the same block of marble the entire time, and then when a block was actually separated, they didn’t have access to trains or trucks to get it to Rome. It was fascinating just thinking about how physically and mentally demanding the process must have been back then, and really put into perspective how difficult a lot of people’s lives have been throughout history.
Swanson School of Engineering 