“QUERCETA DI SERAVEZZA, Italy (Reuters) - In 1517, Michelangelo climbed Mount Altissimo in Tuscany and found the marble of his dreams.It was, the Renaissance master wrote, “of compact grain, homogeneous, crystalline, reminiscent of sugar”. He deemed it perhaps even more precious than that from nearby Carrara, where he had obtained marble for some of his most famous statues. With the blessing of Pope Leo X, Michelangelo designed a path that could get blocks of the white marble down from the mountain to be transported to Florence to be used to decorate the facade of the church of San Lorenzo… After several years of work to carve out a road… the project was abandoned. The church of San Lorenzo still has no facade…
"Modern cutting and extraction techniques have produced a surreal landscape similar to some Cubism paintings, a dizzying array of upside down staircases and sugar-cube structures looking heavenward."
Before the extracting begins, experts known as “tecchiaroli” hang on ropes from the sides of the mountain and pick at its sides with pointy iron bars to remove loose rock that could fall and hurt workers in subsequent phases of the extraction."
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