Marble is a metamorphic rock composed of recrystallized carbonate minerals, which give each block its own characteristic veins and swirls.
The stunning landscape and the raw material of the Carrara Marble quarries continues to inspire generations of designers, architects and interior designers alike.
It is the raw, gray tinted terrain paired with the discovery that every block of marble is unique that creates such fascination.
The undisputed power of Carrara marble is its timelessness. From the early Roman times, the Tuscan region has been plundered for its precious resource and marble's history is written in stone, throughout sculpture and architecture from Michelangelo's David, to Snøhetta's Oslo Opera House.
Back in ancient Rome, marble blocks were carved by laborious methods: fissures were carved into the mountain stone and filled with wet wood which, when expanded, caused the marble to break off in giant pieces. A sled-like contraption on a wooden track was the method used to bring the marble down the mountain until the twentieth century. Today new cutting-edge technology enables the extraction process of blocks up to 9m long. For centuries, Apuan quarries have been a point of reference for the most prestigious marble. Our quarries are located in the heart of the Apuan mountains: extraction, cutting facilities and artistic workshops are close by in the same area.
Travertine is a terrestrial sedimentary rock, formed by the precipitation of carbonate minerals from solution in ground and surface waters, or geothermally heated hot-springs.
Granite is a felsic intrusive igneous rock that is granular and phaneritic in texture. Granites can be predominantly white, pink, or gray in color, depending on their mineralogy.
Sicily is also famous for its stones, from pitch black lava to the white Comiso stone.
Lava stone, technically called basalt, is the results of centuries of Vulcanic eruptions in the region.
Etna has been one of the largest source of this dark stone, the quarries are in fact at the end of a massive lava flow. Lava stone is highly valued for ultimate resistance to wear and impact.
This material is strong enough to be employed for the production of large-format slabs and it's resistant to heat being itself at the same time a good conductor, because the lava stone absorbs heat quickly and releases it slowly.