Carrara marble tour

Carrara marble tour
Full
DESTINATION: Colonnata
TRANSFER: Mercedes minivan
TYPICAL PROGRAMME:
- Pick up at your accommodation
- Meeting with the environmental guide
- Visit to an open air marble museum and Fantiscritti marble quarry
- Lunch in a typical osteria in Colonnata (with lardo tasting)
- Visit to a sculptor studio
- Return to Lucca
details and prices

Carrara marble tour
Regular
DESTINATION: Colonnata
TRANSFER: Mercedes minivan
TYPICAL PROGRAMME:
- Pick up at your accommodation
- Visit to an open air marble museum and Fantiscritti marble quarry
- Lunch in a typical osteria in Colonnata (with lardo tasting)
- Return to Lucca
details and prices

Carrara marble tour
Light
DESTINATION: Colonnata
TRANSFER: Mercedes minivan
TYPICAL PROGRAMME:
- Pick up at your accommodation
- Visit to an open air marble museum and Fantiscritti marble quarry
- Return to Lucca
details and prices

...marble, quarrymen and

lardo di Colonnata

About 60 kms far from Lucca, one of the most incredible landscapes in the world surprises visitors: the marble quarries on the Apuan Alps.
In this area, rich in many stories and in human fights to the nature, the precious white stone has been excavated since Roman times. 

Here you have the chance to explore a natural landscape among the most beautyful, but also to discover ancient traditions, small mountain villages and different ways of living.

It may happen to meet some old quarry men, living in the marble quarries area since their birth, a kind of legenday figures telling mysterious tales and singing songs about this proud work. In the area of the Fantiscritti quarry, for example, one of these men created a small but fascinating open air museum, where it is possible to understand how hard, dangerous and, somehow, heroic,  the quarry men life was in the past.
Nowadays it is still a hard work, but everything has been changed by technology. While you visit the quarries, you can see men working all around and can listen to the noise of the stones falling down from the mountains walls.

A really typical feature of these places, is food: in the old times, men needed to eat energetic things to do their work in the quarries, but they were poor and had to "invent" cheap feeding.
As a result of this simple gastronomic tradition nowadays "Lardo di Colonnata" is one of the most famous products of Tuscany. It is a  delicious spiced lard obtained by an old local recipe, that can be tasted in one of the several "larderia" of the small village of Colonnata (one of the most famous quarry men villages).

So, an all day marble tour always includes a stop at one of these picturesque places, that are really "gourmet paradises".

What we suggest to include in the marble tour is to visit one sculpture studio, where it is possible to see the scolptors' work and understand how artists from all over the world (Michelangelo is maybe the most famous) research this precious white stone for their works.

NOTA BENE: Our tours are planned for small groups,in order to preserve the environment and the quiet villages you visit.
Also, in this area streets are very narrow and we prefer to use small vans from 7 up to 16 seats (even if big buses are allowed to reach these places) .