Michelangelo's Bianco Trambiserra quarry

The story of our Bianco Trambiserra quarry begins more than half a century ago, in 1518, when Michelangelo Buonarroti began extracting marble for his facade for San Lorenzo in Florence, the church of the Medici family, commissioned by Pope Leo X.

On 15 March of that year, Michelangelo went to a notary, Giovanni Badessi in Pietrasanta, to have the first of a series of contracts made for mining marble on the Monte di Trambiserra near Seravezza. He pledged to end this work within eight years.

There was no good connection between the Trambiserra quarry and the sea, so Michelangelo designed and built a road to transport marble, passing through Seravezza, Corvaia and Querceta and ending at Forte dei Marmi, where the stone was loaded onto boats and shipped down the coast and up the Arno river to Florence.

"La Pietà" by Michelangelo

Made of our marble
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According to Vasari in his life of Michelangelo: "...it was decided to make a road for several miles through the mountains, breaking down rocks with hammers and pickaxes to obtain a level, and sinking piles in the marshy places; and there Michelangelo spent many years in executing the wishes of the Pope."

After almost three years of immense work, the road was finished: "Finally five columns of the proper size were excavated." Besides these columns, Michelangelo mined a lot more marble, which has remained in the quarry.

Just one of the five columns was shipped to Florence, where for a long time it remained unused in the Piazza di San Lorenzo. According to historians, "it was buried in the early 17th century along with other architectural elements, in a ditch dug in the square along the left-hand side of the church." The other four columns were abandoned on the sea-shore.

Unfortunately the master never finished his work on the facade of San Lorenzo. In light of the difficulty and high costs of the enterprise, the pope decided to abandon the project and the church was left without marble cladding.

It was a time of great sadness for Michelangelo. After almost three years of tedious and painful labour, he was forced to leave his work unfinished, despite setting great store in it; he declared it would have been "the most beautiful work ever made in Italy."