Michelangelo's David was born here, before Florence: the master climbed in person to the quarries of the Apuan Alps to choose the blocks, and Carrara marble has dressed temples, mosques and skyscrapers for two thousand years. The quarries can be visited — Fantiscritti above all — and the sight of mountains that look snow-covered in the middle of August is unrepeatable.
The coat of arms says everything: a wheel, with the Latin motto Fortitudo mea in rota, «my strength is in the wheel» — the wheels of the carts that brought the marble down. Between the fifteenth and the nineteenth centuries Carrara was, together with Massa, one of the two cities of the Duchy of Massa and Carrara, and it still shares with it the role of provincial capital. In town, the Academy of Fine Arts has been training sculptors since 1769 and the open workshops show the old gesture. Colonnata, the quarrymen's village, gave its name to the lard cured in marble basins: you go up to taste it where it is made.
Torre di Castruccio
Bistecca alla Fiorentina
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Next up: Saint Ceccardus, patron of the marble town where Michelangelo once stayed, Wednesday 16 June
Nearest airport: Pisa Galilei, 50 km away
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📅 Every year, on 16 June
Carrara celebrates Saint Ceccardus, bishop and martyr, on 16 June; the town, an international hub for extracting and working the famous Apuan marble, still preserves in Piazza del Duomo the house where Michelangelo Buonarroti stayed.
Straight-line distances from the town centre. Tap a point to open its page.
The closest destinations covered by our editors, with straight-line distance.
Outside Carrara, but an easy day trip away.
