Frammenti nel paesaggio. "The Iconic Example of Carrara Carved Landscape". Letture e ricerche/ Landscape Fragments: “The Iconic Example of Carrara Carved Landscape”. Studies and Research.

Marble quarries constitute complex cultural landscapes where natural, urban, productive, and cultural dimensions intersect. These environments encompass not only sites of industrial archaeology but also places of significant artistic, historical, and material value. Within such contexts, conventional heritage protection frameworks often prove inadequate to address the needs and expectations of local communities, as they struggle to integrate the multiple tangible and intangible values embedded in quarrying heritage.
The research developed within the CARVEland network is grounded in a comparative analysis of three European marble basins—Carrara (Italy), Vila Viçosa (Portugal), and Macael (Spain)—selected as representative case studies of distinct extraction traditions, territorial configurations, and cultural contexts. Drawing upon a shared theoretical and regulatory framework, the project investigates the ways in which quarrying activities shape and transform landscapes, while simultaneously generating social, economic, and cultural dynamics that redefine their significance over time.
This comparative perspective is complemented by an in-depth examination of the Carrara marble basin. The study combines an analysis of the current legislative framework, a critical review of the existing scholarly literature, and a semantic mapping of the principal concepts associated with quarrying heritage. Such an approach enables a multidimensional and process-oriented interpretation of quarry landscapes, in which extraction, void, context, and territory are understood not as static entities but as interrelated components of a continuous process of transformation, negotiation, and reconfiguration of cultural value.