The Curse of Carrara Marble

A scene from The Brutalist, perhaps:

When we eventually reached a quarry and I got out the car, I felt as if I had walked into an overexposed photograph. The heat and light were obliterating. The quarry looked more like a modern metropolis than a natural landscape: soaring towers, symmetrical grids, improbably clean lines. Heavy machines lurked; giant blocks of freshly quarried stone, stacked like slabs of butter, awaited their ride down the mountain. Small broken bits of marble were everywhere.

It's a little jarring to read about the Massa-Carrara region in Italy—known for the beautiful marble that decorates our kitchens and buildings—and find that it is among the poorest regions in Tuscany. The profits of the industry bypass the region they mine from, and the ecological effects are devastating, as reported by The Dial.

According to those who have worked in the local quarries for decades, the finest white variety has been entirely depleted; the rest of the quarries could be emptied within 50 years.