Carrara, Italy – At dawn, the jagged peaks of the Apuan Alps can be seen rising steeply above the Tyrrhenian Sea, their sharp silhouettes mirrored in the still water below. Shaped over millennia by wind and rain – and in recent centuries by mining – these mountains have a deeply scarred appearance.

For more than 2,000 years, marble has been extracted from these hills.

But today, the damage this has caused is more visible than ever. Aquifers polluted by industrial products used for the mining process, a near-constant procession of heavy trucks pumping fumes into the air and a high number of workplace accidents in the quarries – the last fatal accident happened on April 28 – are the daily reality of a territory in flux, a place where natural beauty and industrial transformation collide.

Carrara, a small town nestled at the foot of the Apuan Alps in northwestern Tuscany, is one of the world’s most important white marble extraction districts, with more than 100 quarries on its doorstep.

Marble has been quarried in this area since Roman times, when it became the stone of the empire. Used for decoration, construction and sculpture, it was a symbol of prestige and high status.

Later, it was used by the Catholic Church in much the same way – to adorn important palaces and cathedrals and to create religious sculptures. During the Renaissance, Carrara marble gained fame through sculptures by artists like Michelangelo, Donatello, Bernini and others.

Over the past two centuries, however, the process has changed dramatically – shifting from artisanal methods to industrial extraction.

Today, marble still carries the aura of global luxury. It’s celebrated in architecture magazines, interior design trends, and films like The Brutalist. But beneath the polished surface lies a far more complex story.

Over the past 30 years, more marble has been extracted than during the previous two millennia. From the port of Marina di Carrara, a few kilometres from the quarries, it is shipped across the globe. According to municipal data, Carrara’s marble industry produces between 4 million and 5 million tonnes of marble each year, generating 130 million euros ($148m) in profits, driven largely by exports: Raw blocks go mainly to China (51 percent), while carved marble items head mostly to the United States, United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia.

Carrara has changed

The historical centre of Carrara is a maze of narrow, medieval streets lined with pastel-coloured facades, artisan workshops and quiet courtyards.

The Carrione stream, which flows down from the Apuan Alps, cuts through the downtown area where 14th- to 18th-century stone houses with shuttered windows stand alongside ornate church portals and marble sculptures – carved from stone extracted just a few kilometres away in the mountains that are clearly visible from the city.

Since the 2012 opening of the Strada dei Marmi – a 119-million euro ($135m) bypass stretching 6km (4 miles) between the quarries and the local industrial area, diverting heavy traffic away from the town – marble trucks no longer barrel through the town centre. At one point, as many as 600 trucks each day brought dust, noise and diesel fumes into town. Today, the air is cleaner, the streets are calmer.

But the silence also reflects a broader decline. Carrara’s population has fallen below 60,000 – its lowest since World War II – and more than 200 small businesses have shut down in the past 10 years. As young people have left in search of work elsewhere and automation has replaced many jobs in the quarries, the bakeries, butchers, fishmongers – everyday life in the town – are disappearing.

The quarries are also changing. Today, less than 1 percent of the marble extracted in Carrara is used for sculpture – a stark departure from the region’s traditional legacy. That included the romanticised myth around the men who worked in the quarries. For centuries, men extracted marble from the rugged Apuan Alps with limited means, facing immense risks and frequent accidents. They were seen by Italians as conquering the mountains through grit and sheer determination and were considered a symbol of strength and sacrifice.

The marble mined was used primarily for the construction and decoration of temples, public monuments, churches, palaces and fine sculpture, as well as locally for furnishing homes. Only scraps and lower-grade stone were diverted for use as lime or aggregate for construction.

These days, much of the marble mined here is turned into calcium carbonate, a key ingredient used to make everyday products including toothpaste, paper and paint. Since the 1980s, the calcium carbonate market has made it possible to transform waste – marble blocks not suitable for other uses – into profit by grinding it into marble powder for use in various industrial goods.

Meanwhile, large marble blocks are shipped abroad, where cheaper labour is used to produce tiles, furniture and luxury finishes.

Carrara, once the beating heart of marble craftsmanship, therefore, has lost nearly all of its artisanal industry.

“Carrara has changed,” says Matteo Procuranti, an artist and activist whose father was once a quarry director.

“Back in the day, we had three cinemas and two theatres,” recalls the former quarry worker. “Now it’s all closed. People leave. Carrara has become a dormitory beneath the quarries.”

Matteo’s father, like many others, switched from extracting marble blocks to working for Omya, a multinational company that, starting in the 1980s, began grinding marble waste into calcium carbonate. Eventually, he was laid off during a round of job cuts.

That experience triggered a deep awakening for Matteo, gradually changing his life and perspective. “It wasn’t just about the quarries,” he says. “Over time, I realised the problem was much bigger – it had to do with the entire economic and production model.”

He believes the region has been overtaken by what he calls “extractivism”, a system driven by profits. “It consumes resources, drains communities, and concentrates power and wealth elsewhere,” he says.

“It has become a political struggle (for us), a collective one, rooted in our territory but looking far beyond it.”

Resisting ‘extractivism’ through art

Matteo is an actor and theatre educator and has spent his life in Carrara. He says he mounts his resistance to extractivism through cultural and political action.

Together with others, he co-founded Fuoriluogo, an independent cultural group that produces satire, music and counter-narratives, rejecting corporate values and promoting alternative visions for Carrara’s future.

It is part of a small creative scene that has taken root in Carrara. Some artists have come here from elsewhere in Italy, as well as from other European countries and even as far afield as China, to join this artistic renaissance.

Others have chosen to stay here after studying at the local Fine Arts Academy, drawn by the town’s ancient sculptural legacy and its peculiar mix of decay and enchantment.

Rosmunda moved to Carrara more than a decade ago to attend the Academy and never left. Today, she creates visual art in a studio next door to an old anarchist print shop. The autonomous print shop “La Cooperativa Tipolitografica”, which the space taken up by her studio was originally part of, was founded in 1974 as a place where the anarchist movement could publish its books, newspapers, posters, pamphlets and flyers.

Carrara’s connection to anarchism began nearly 150 years ago, when anarchist ideals found fertile ground among the downtrodden workers in the marble quarries. Led by Alberto Meschi, Carrara’s quarrymen became the first in Italy to win a six-and-a-half-hour workday in the early 20th century. Anarchist circles and collectives emerged in nearly every town and neighbourhood across the Carrara region. In Gragnana, a village in the Apuan Alps, Italy’s oldest anarchist circle, “Errico Malatesta”, founded in 1885, still operates to this day.

“I’m one of those who love this town and want it to thrive,” says Rosmunda, who believes the town has been hard-hit by years of austerity policies, introduced by the government following the global financial crisis of 2008, and underinvestment.

Only a small part of marble-extraction profits now flow back to the municipality, and Carrara and surrounding villages have been left with inadequate social housing, stripped-down health and childcare services and failing public transport.

“It’s hard – there’s no social welfare, public services are falling apart,” Rosmunda says. “The wealth (from marble) stays in very few hands.”

Sculptor Chantal Stropeni adds: “Carrara is a paradox. There’s immense wealth – marble – and yet deep poverty, even among artists. To resist, we’ve formed a collective sculpture studio called Ponte di Ferro. There are 14 of us. We want to approach art differently – collectively. Carrara is a workshop: It’s easy to create here, but incredibly hard to see. The town is falling apart, and maybe that works in its favour: No one pays attention, no one asks questions.”

In the meantime, the mountains are disappearing – at a rate of 4 million to 5 million tonnes per year. The town is growing poorer. Automation has replaced many quarry jobs such as block cutting, drilling, splitting, chiselling and materials removal. Local jobs have dropped from 800 to about 600 in recent years.

But resistance in this region has a long legacy. “We’ve been fighting to reduce the impact of the extractive system – organising events, protests, talks and legal actions – for more than 30 years,” says Paola Antonioli, president of Legambiente Carrara, an Italian environmental nonprofit organisation. “Sure, the road is long. But something is shifting. Collective consciousness is beginning to awaken.”

This took on new strength in 2019 with the formation of Fridays for Future Carrara, which followed the example set by environmental campaigner Greta Thunberg and holds protests on Fridays in the town.

Alongside Legambiente, a network of local environmental organisations and grassroots groups are working in this same direction.

Together, they organise hikes, events, protests and awareness campaigns against marble extraction, calling for community control over common resources such as water, transparency over quarry concessions and stronger environmental and labour protections.

Some have taken legal action against individual companies and government administrative departments over the private commercial use of what they see as public land. Today, Carrara is a battleground.

“Carrara is like this,” Chantal says. “But it won’t always be. Not if we keep creating. Keep resisting. Keep living here, in this paradox.”