Carrara artistic itineraries

• A route from Piazza Matteotti to Piazza Battisti
• Route B Marble Museum

  A route from Piazza Matteotti to Piazza Battisti

  This walk to the discovery of Carrara begins in Piazza Matteotti, where there are two sculptures of relief: the Prancing Horse of Arturo Dazzi and Porcellino Cinghiale or by Pietro Tacca (the original is on display at the Galleria degli Uffizi).

  From this part the nineteenth, pedestrian via Rome that leads us to the main entrance of the castle Malaspina di Carrara. Built on earlier fortifications dating back to Lombard, the construction of the building dates back to Malaspina Cybo Guglielmo Malaspina, and in 1448 became the residence of the dynasty. Currently it is possible to distinguish the two nuclei composing the palace: the sixteenth-century building, built by Alberico I, incorporates the former medieval castle, which remains the keep. Since 1805 the castle is home of the prestigious Accademia di Belle Arti, in which hosts a major gipsoteca, considered among the largest and most comprehensive collections made in Italy.

  In front of the palace stands the monument to Pietro Tacca, sculptor Carrara, conducted by Carlo Fontana, and opens on the right square Gramsci, Piazza d'Armi already, adorned with a fountain and some monuments.

  Taking Via del Plebiscito meets Suffragio church, built in early nineteenth century. The fa?ade, rather simple, has a beautiful baroque marble portal, which is based on a high relief depicting the Anime purgatives. Today deconsecrated is used for exhibitions and concerts. Down the road along the wall of Piazza Gramsci, reach of the square, overlooked by the eighteenth century Palazzo Rosso, former seat of the Academy, and the seventeenth-century church of Carmine, whose portal is a Madonna and Child by Bartolomeo Ordo?ez. Opposite the church is taking away Mary, among the most characteristic streets of the medieval city, where according to tradition would have lived at number 14 Petrarch in 1343. Continuing along this road you will reach Piazza del Duomo.

  Piazza Duomo

  Also known as square Drent, is the focus of ancient city. Stands at the heart of the beautiful statue depicting Baccio Bandinelli Andrea Doria, in the likeness of the god Neptune, and renamed the Giant. Of course it is marble. Everything, moreover, in this city speaks to us of the precious white gold of the nearby Alps. Shaped by the hands of geniuses of the art, this area has resulted in immense masterpieces, like those made by the "divine" Michelangelo, to be able to choose blocks marble on which to work, went personally to the cave and during his stay carrarese lived in a house overlooking the square.

  Duomo

  Dedicated to Saint Andrew, the cathedral of Carrara could not be done in marble. Romanesque style was built around the 'A thousand years after which further action by which Gothic elements were introduced, such as the rosette composed of small columns in tortiglioni, one different from the others. The facade, built in the second half of the fourteenth century, is characterized by a dichromate, often in churches in Tuscany, where bands of white marble alternating with those of dark marble.

  The door, a real masterpiece of marble sculpture is framed by an archway decorated with pictures taken from places inside and bestiaries divided into three naves and semicircular apse. Among the works stored there should linger to admire the sarcophagus of St. Ceccardo patron of Carrara, trecentesca advertisement, sculptural work of the Pisan school, and a wooden crucifix made in the fourteenth century by Angelo Puccinelli

  A hand bell towers marble added fourteenth century.

  Along a stretch of road and then via Ghibellina Oivo reach Piazza Alberica.

  Piazza Alberica

  If Piazza Duomo, the small size and the shape sghemba, is a typical example of urban development medieval square Alberica, large and regular, is the seventeenth-century salon. Open in the second sixteenth century by Alberico Malaspina I Cybo on Rechtsanwaelte Boario, is crowned with beautiful eighteenth-six houses, mostly it is sumptuous residences of families linked to the reality of trade and quarrying of marble. Stand out among all, the palace of the Doctor, in his characteristic deep red color, and the building of Logge, where was born sculptor Pietro Tacca, of which there is a monographic exhibition in the XII International Biennale of Sculpture in Carrara. At the center dominates the square, the nineteenth century statue of Mary Beatrice d'Este. Pedestal is inserted into a fountain topped by a sphinx, popularly known as the lion, a copy of an Egyptian preserved in the collections of the Louvre.

  A few steps you open square on which Battisti gives the theater Animationer, an architecture inspired by the formal models and compositional Greek and built on the initiative of citizens. The full marble facade has two sets of columns. Two staircases, adorned with allegorical plaster depicting the music and poetry, you access the boxes, divided by small columns separated by precious marble stucco.

  Route B Marble Museum

  Outside the old town, along Via XX Settembre, is one of the most representative of the local culture of Carrara. This museum could not find elsewhere, if not to speak of Carrara marble from the name, whose origins are widely different assumptions related to the cave, and the coat of arms depicting a wheel with the Latin inscription Fortitudo mea in rota (my strength is the wheel). And those are the wheels of the wagons used pertrasportare marble. Only in this city you could find such a museum complex, well organized in six sections, which are shown the 114 types of marble extracted from the Apuan Alps. Enrich the exhibition old maps, archeological plans and plants, and infrared aerial photographs. Outside materials are exposed to huge amount, including special interest is a wagon, the last remains of the railway marble, which began its activities in 1890.