Discover Carrara: Holiday Apartment for Marble, Art and History

Museums, art outdoors and the marble quarries offer different perspectives on the city and its cultural development. Anyone looking for a holiday apartment in Carrara can plan their trip around these focal points and combine exhibitions, a park, quarry history and a visit to the marble quarries.

Art and Marble in Carrara

The Museo Civico del Marmo displays archaeological finds, graphic and photographic documents, marble-processing machinery, casts, educational models and marble samples.

The mudaC – Museo delle Arti di Carrara is dedicated to sculpture and its stylistic and material development. At the same time, it documents the city’s artistic development from the 1950s to the present day. The museum is housed in the 17th-century San Francesco complex, which includes a church and an adjoining monastery.

The CARMI – Museo Carrara e Michelangelo is housed in Villa Fabbricotti, a 19th-century building in the Parco della Padula in the city of Carrara. On the piano nobile of the CARMI, Carrara presents a tribute to the sculptor Michelangelo Buonarotti, who used the city’s marble in masterpieces that have been recognised across different eras. In the Il Ravaccione gallery, a mural by the artist OZMO depicts Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam.

Holiday Apartment in Carrara: Discover Culture and Marble

The Parco della Padula houses a permanent exhibition of outdoor sculptures. The works were created on the occasion of the International Sculpture Biennale of the city of Carrara in 2002 as part of the open-air section Scolpire il Marmo. The park is accessible to people with disabilities and can be visited free of charge.

The marble quarries in this area of Carrara have been exploited since Roman times. At the Cava Museo Danesi in Fantiscritti, the historic work can be viewed from a different perspective: it is not an active quarry, but preserves the memory of the quarry workers’ lives and work with a reconstructed shelter, a laid-out spiral wire, life-sized marble oxen and the workers’ tools.

A 45-minute guided tour of the Cava Museo Fantiscritti explores 2,000 years of quarry history, art history and the social life of the workers employed there. This also includes the historic methods used to process and transport marble. The marble quarries can be reached from Carrara city centre by car, motorbike or bicycle; the journey can therefore be planned as a separate part of the day.

Anyone looking for a holiday apartment in Carrara can use their preferred combination of museums, outdoor art and quarry-related attractions as the basis for planning their trip. This creates different daily rhythms: focused art appreciation, sculptures in the park or a journey to the quarries. Carrara may therefore appeal to visitors who wish to explore cultural history not only in museums, but also through the material, the world of work and the place where it is extracted.

More Places for Your Travel Planning

Marina di Carrara, Arpiola-pianturcano, Tresana, Podenzana, Malgrate, Gragnana, Bagnone and Fosdinovo

For the higher-level travel overview: Massa-Carrara.