Excursions in Carrara Italy
 

Have any of the well travelled Fodorites made use of any guided tours of the matble quarries in and around Carrara?

My fiancee and I will be in Italy in September. She is an engeneer and is fascinated by large operations like the marble quarries of Carrara. I know we can drive up the mountains and get a distant view of the quarries, but we would like something more up close, right in the action. We will be driving through on our way to Siena, so we couldn't afford the entire day. Any tips or hints would be appreciated.

Thanks.

The workings at Carrara would be worth visiting for reasons you mentioned . however a very interesting trip from this region can be taken that feeds down to Lucca and onto Sienna.
The road enters at Massa just south of there and goes up into the workings of Michealangelos marble grounds. When the Pope had drama with the Carrara marble mafia he ordered MA to build a road to an alternative mable source.(It took him 2 years to cut and organise this route) This road stops right at the cuttings and then goes through a tunnel and wends its way down the Garfagnana Valley to Barga and thence to Lucca.Very tempting to stop and stay at Barga or Lucca........ Lucca was our favourite bigger place of all our trips. If interested I can get out my journal and conjour up some sites hopefully.

We were in Carrara this June. We drove up the mountain and found a working marble cave. They gave us a wonderful tour inside the cave. We were there on the weekend when the cave was not in operation so they were doing tours all day. On weekedays they do tours only later in the afternoon after the work has stopped. I will try to find the name of the place. It didn't take that long so a nice break on your drive to Siena.

I am travelling to Italy in late March 2007 and I'm interested in visiting Carrara for a night or two. Do any of the previous post-ers have advice on sites or places to stay?
Thank you

for elloyd:
My mother was a lifelong professional artist, sculpting being one of her talents. In her 70s, she took several trips to study marble sculpting at Pietrasanta, which is very close to Carrara. She loved the town of Pietrasanta. She highly recommended we visit, and though I haven't been (yet!), my mom's other recs for places to go, things to do have always worked out well for me. There is a little hotel in Pietrasanta that has been written up in Karen Brown's book.
http://tinyurl.com/yl2hqh

We stayed in Lerici which is on the Ligurian coast and really enjoyed it there. It was about a 30-40 minute drive to Carrara. From Lerici we were also able to do the Cinque Terre by boat and enjoy some time on the beach.