Carrara: Secondo il The New York Times (versione inglese)

THE roadside thermometer read 31 degrees, and the mountains rising up behind the town of Carrara, Italy, gleamed white. But the sandy beach was packed that day, and for good reason: it was mid-July, the temperature was in Celsius (about 88 degrees Fahrenheit), and the white on the mountains wasn’t snow, but precious marble.

Carrara’s reputation is inextricably linked to the marble mountains that loom above the town, framing every scene. It was here during the Renaissance that Michelangelo found the block of white marble that he later transformed into “David.”

Less than two hours from Florence by car or train, the town of Carrara is in the green foothills of the Apuan Alps in northern Tuscany, wedged between the rugged mountains and the sparkling Mediterranean. In the summer, the town serves as an ideal overnight escape from the throngs that fill Florence, and the nearby beaches swell with mellow out-of-towners. But all year round, visitors wander around Carrara’s enchanting old town — across streets dappled with marble cobblestones, through piazzas lined with marble benches, past oversize marble statues and into the inevitable marble duomo.

“The city of Carrara has for centuries based its economy on the extraction of marble,” said Elena Del Becaro, a local resident who works as a representative for the town’s biennial sculpture festival. Back in Roman times, quarrymen cut the marble by hand with hammers and chisels at a rate of about an inch a day. Today, 15,000 tons are extracted daily from those mountains.

At the town’s Museo del Marmo, tidbits like these await the curious visitor. A stop at the museum is also a useful primer to fully appreciate the awesome sights in the nearby mountains. Interactive exhibits and a brief video illustrate the progression of marble excavation in the area, while a maze of hallways winds past hundreds of multi-hued marble samples.

But Carrara’s relevance is not relegated to its past glory. That acclaimed sculpture festival — the Biennale Internazionale di Scultura di Carrara, which runs through Oct. 31 this year — offers bitingly modern works (predictably, much of it marble) from renowned artists and architects, including Maurizio Cattelan and Zaha Hadid, and proves that the local stone remains relevant within contemporary art. For today’s artists, “marble gives to the work an idea of history,” said Fabio Cavallucci, curator for this year’s event.

But for the many anonymous sculptors who toil in the studios in and around Carrara, history is probably not what they were thinking about while sculpturing Madonnas, Renaissance-style lawn ornaments and virtually every other conceivable knickknack (bust of Mussolini, anyone?) that wind up for sale in roadside shops all over the area.

The real souvenir to treasure, though, is the unforgettable experience of ascending the steep, winding road toward the mountains.

The awe-inspiring journey continues on guided quarry tours, where visitors are taken deep inside the mountain to experience the caves’ majestic grandeur. After the initial shock of passing from the scorching summer heat to an eerily chilled darkness, the enormousness of it all begins to sink in. Sheer marble walls soar a hundred feet high while dripping water echoes through the shadowy, cavernous spaces. The atmosphere is truly otherworldly — “a kind of moon landscape,” in the words of Mr. Cavallucci.

But touring a marble cave with 30 other shivering tourists in yellow hard hats doesn’t have the same sense of discovery as exploring one alone. And despite the questionable legality of unauthorized cave exploration, on weekends curious visitors regularly clamber over dump trucks and multi-ton blocks of marble to explore in solitude.

On a Sunday afternoon in July, across the road from one of the most accessible caves, Massimo Vanelli, a local sculptor, was covered in dust, working a block of marble into the shape of a hand. During the week, Mr. Vanelli works at his family’s workshop in Carrara. “But on Saturdays and Sundays I come here,” he said. “This is my outdoor workshop in the sun.”

Mr. Vanelli confirmed that many tourists venture inside, despite spray-painted warnings against it. “If one comes to Carrara, one sees the caves,” he said. “It’s beautiful!”