Fossacava, a remarkable quarry in Carrara, initiated marble extraction during the Roman era in the 1st century BC. Today, visitors can enjoy its perfect preservation.
Carrara marble
The extraction of marble from the Apuan Alps began in Roman times and continued almost uninterrupted for over two thousand years. News left by writers of that era and archaeological evidence tell us that the Carrara marble basin was at the center of intense exploitation.
The marble trade took place through the Roman colony of Luni, founded in 177 BC and equipped with a port at the mouth of the Magra River. From the 1st century AD, the emperors took direct control of the quarries. Thus, Carrara marble gradually replaced Greek marbles in sculpture, architecture, and the decoration of public and private buildings in Rome and throughout the Empire.
The history of Fossacava
The Fossacava quarry is part of Carrara’s marble basin, particularly Colonnata, one of the most exploited during Roman times. Its name derives from the amphitheater shape, formed as a result of the extraction activities of gray-blue marbles. At the end of the 19th century, semifinished artifacts bearing inscriptions were still present at the site. In February 1927, researchers discovered a Lunense marble lion’s paw beneath the Roman era debris. In the 1930s, ironwork tools and a statuette of the goddess Luna emerged. It’s likely that the quarrymen originally worshipped this statuette.
The Civic Marble Museum of Carrara displays this ancient statuette and a model that reconstructs the amphitheater shape of the Fossacava quarry. The southern slope of Fossacava presents the most numerous and well-preserved traces, which then merge, in the final part, into a spur characterized by traces of more recent work. The northern slope, more exposed to erosion, appears to be poorer in evidence.
The Romans employed various methods for extracting and processing marble.
The extraction methods employed by the Romans have been known for a long time, thanks to the findings of ancient work tools discovered in the quarries. Moreover, these techniques remained in use throughout the Middle Ages and even into modern times. Once they identified the block to be extracted, they made the cut with chisels. It was a deep V-shaped groove around the block of marble. The workers then inserted iron wedges into the groove and hammered them to enlarge the cut. The block gradually crumbled, and when it was about to detach, the workers intervened with poles.
On-site, workers squared, sawed, or even roughly shaped the extracted block. In fact, the discovery of rough sculptural and architectural fragments in various quarries, along with the presence of sculpted statues depicting deities, suggests that, in addition to excavators and low-skilled laborers, the quarry also housed specialized workers with higher qualifications. Even if they were not professional artists and sculptors.
The sea route
Lastly, we marked the extracted and squared blocks with initials or progressive numbers. We either slid them over the debris to reach the road, or transported them on wooden beams held by ropes along the “lizza paths” to reach the yards further down.
The carts loaded them and transported them to the port of Luni, from where the ships departed for Rome and the provinces of the Empire.
The findings from Fossavaca
In the modern era, the site first appeared under the name “Cava antica La Fabbrica” in a drawing by the Massese painter Saverio Salvioni. Between 1810 and 1813, he created a series of views of the Carrara quarries. Around the same period, the Carrara scholar Emanuele Repetti, in a work on Apuan marbles, described the Fossacava quarry with these words: “It is a kind of amphitheater carved into a very high rock.” At the end of the nineteenth century, the Barnabite father Luigi Bruzza, who was among the first to study the inscriptions of Roman quarries, made known seven inscriptions present on marble blocks from Fossacava.
The Italian Ministry of Public Instruction recognized the quarry as dating back to the Roman era and declared it of archaeological interest in 1911. In the 1920s, Luisa Banti, an Inspector of the Ministry, made known other archaeological finds that occurred in the area of Fossacava. Among these was a small statue of Artemis, a probable personification of the goddess Luna and the city of Luni, a marble lion’s paw, and marble reliefs. They also included tools for extraction and a bronze fibula, both of which have since vanished. Recent studies, however, have established that these finds come from another Roman-era extraction site located toward Mount Gioia, which is currently no longer visible.
The Fossacava path
Inside Fossacava, a series of walkways and paths allow visitors to explore the archaeological area. At the beginning of the path, we find an area where traces of Roman-era marble excavation techniques appear. There are visible trenches, dug with a pickaxe to a depth of 17 inches and a length of approximately 20 feet. Someone made an incision along the lower edges of the trenches (formella). The workers inserted trapezoidal-shaped iron wedges into the formella.
Hammer strikes on the wedges either caused the block to detach along a horizontal plane or exploited a natural fracture. The visible traces in this area belong to a late phase of the exploitation of Fossacava marble. The sparse and diversely oriented trenches suggest a brief exploitation in this sector, and the absence of a proper quarry front after the end of marble extraction (caesura).
The marble blocks
Continuing along the path, we can admire several semi-finished blocks located within the Roman-era excavation. They bear inscriptions, the so-called “quarry marks,” which are abbreviations functional to the organization of the extraction activity. The provided information includes the name of the quarry owner (e.g., COL for colonia, indicating that the property belongs to the colony of Luni), the sector of the block extraction (e.g., CAE for “caesura,” indicating the quarry front, and LO and LOC for locus, indicating a specific sector of the quarry front). The name of the individual overseeing the cutting activity (e.g., HILAR, per Hilarius, indicates the name of the cutter, possibly a slave) is also included.
Specifically, in the first block, the abbreviation CAE follows the term “Ephebus,” which denotes a slave of Eastern origin, potentially suggesting the block’s origin from the caesura. The abbreviation ends with the mention of a second character, Pudens, presumably a slave. The term Caledus, also a slave of Eastern origin, marks the second block, which is also indicated by the number 19.
The “great Roman cut”
66 feet high and 164 feet wide, the “great Roman cut” in the southern quarry front bears the marks of pickaxes and wedges across the entire wall, through which the marble blocks were detached. The tools used in the Roman-era extraction activities left these marks over a period of at least three centuries. Archaeological findings from the Carrara quarries confirm the iron composition of the main tools. The heavy pickaxe was used to dig trenches, while the hammers and chisels were used together to detach the marble block from the wall.
The workers excavated the marble veins from the top through cuts that left “festoon” traces. They then repeated slabs every 23 inches, positioned perpendicular to the main natural fractures, which instead have a vertical orientation. The inclination of the wall and the very dense visible horizontal grooves are the final result of this long and constant extraction activity. The large Roman cut also bears some inscriptions. The most prominent is formed by the letters DM in the eastern section of the wall. It probably indicates the division of the quarry front into several sectors. Each of which is under the responsibility of a foreman.
The ravaneti
In 2015, an excavation along the southern cut identified an archaeological stratification consisting of accumulations of chips and marble blocks, known as “ravaneti“. Different periods, from the Roman era to the last century, contributed to their formation. The extractive exploitation began in the 1st century BC. The workers excavated the southern quarry front from an altitude of 492 meters above sea level to a depth of over 65 feet, ultimately reaching an altitude of 471 meters above sea level.
The extraction from this front ceased around the middle of the 2nd century AD. The area at the foot of the cut became a dump for the chips and blocks left over from processing in other sectors of the quarry. This led to the formation of a first spoil heap, approximately 6 feet high, encompassing the entire bottom of the quarry. On this new level, a workshop was installed for the rough shaping of semi-finished blocks.
The following centuries
The 2015 archaeological investigation identified the layout of the quarry during its abandonment, which occurred around the 3rd-4th century AD. At that time, the site still held the final marble blocks under construction. Some of them appeared practically ready for transport. In the medieval period, people revisited and frequented the site, possibly only to retrieve the abandoned marble blocks that had lain there since the Roman era.
In modern times, the quarry was once again filled with new deposits of marble debris and blocks from nearby quarries. Following the end of World War II, in the southwestern corner, a new quarry front was briefly opened using modern techniques. They eliminated a portion of the Roman cut’s traces.
Visiting Fossacava: useful information
You can visit the Fossacava quarry independently or by booking a guided tour, located along the municipal road to Colonnata. Panels with QR codes equip the visit route. They guide visitors on a virtual tour with 3D videos detailing the quarry’s activities from Roman times to the present day. The quarry recently removed architectural barriers and installed an InfoPoint at the parking lot.
Fossacava Gallery
Fossacava video
Map of Fossacava Carrara
Carrara weather
Meteo Carrara
Tourist information offices in Carrara
Email address for all information: pointsinfocarrara@comune.carrara.ms.it
Opening hours of tourist information and reception points:
- IAT Tourist Information Point—Historic Center—Piazza 2 Giugno, 1. Opening hours: every day from 10:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. and from 3:30 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. Phone: +39 335 834 3272
- IAT Tourist Information Point Marina di Carrara “PuntoBlu”—Via Genova, 1. Opening hours: every day from 10:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. and from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. Phone: +39 335 712 2609
- Fossacava Tourist Information Office – Colonnata. Strada Comunale per Colonnata, 54033 Carrara (MS). Open from Monday to Sunday, 9 a.m.–12 p.m. Phone: +39 335 1047436
