The city of Carrara in Tuscany is renowned for the marble quarried there, which has also been used in such famous monuments as London’s Marble Arch and The Pantheon in Rome.
Such is the city’s inextricable link to the rock, the word Carrara is said to come from the Latin word carrariae, meaning “quarries”.
The BBC reports that there are concerns about the local industry’s future, as there have been protests over the excavations being “ruinously thorough”.
Italian environmental groups are arguing the extent of extraction at the 80 or so quarries, which have been in use since Roman times, has made them a blot on the landscape and contributed to dangerous levels of erosion.
Those in the industry say they have voluntarily reduced the amount of marble being hewn from the mountainside and the rock is a vital source of employment to the local economy.
Around 400,000 tonnes of marble was quarried there per year 50 years ago. More recently, close to a million tonnes has been removed from the mountains annually, with yearly marble exports worth around 330 million euros ($AUD480 million), the UK’s Telegraph reported in March 2015.
The newspaper also stated the regional government has acted on calls for tighter restrictions on the amount of rock that can be extracted by introducing a new set of rules designed to limit extraction from untouched areas and increase care for the environment.
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