Carrara
2 of the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf carry an entry for Carrara. Both are reproduced below, so you can see where they agree and where they differ.
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
kar-ra'ra, a town of Italy situated on a small stream of the Apennines midway from Leghorn to Genoa. It is about ten miles from the sea. It is noted chiefly for its quarries, now over 2,000 years old. Carrara marble is a pure white, fine, sugar-grained stone long celebrated in art. It is the choicest marble known. The famous sculptors of Florence, and indeed of all Europe, were wont to work at Carrara to save the expense of transporting stone. The city now maintains a school of sculpture and is a place of some culture. In addition to the pure white carrara of the sculptors, the district has unlimited cliffs of marble for building purposes. The Pantheon of Rome and many other famous buildings are of Carrara stone. Blocks of stone were formerly transported to the Mediterranean over mountain roads by means of ox teams; but in 1890 a spur railway tunneled and bridged its way up to a height of 1,500 feet above the sea level at a cost of $4,000,000, and has supplanted largely primitive methods of transportation. There are over 600 quarries giving employment to 20,000 workmen, and supporting a population of 50,000 people. See Marble ; Greece ; Temple
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
a town of Italy, in the province of Massae Carrara, on the Lavensa, about four miles from the Mediterranean, and 60 W. N. W. of Florence. An academy of sculpture is established here and several artists have their residence, attracted by the convenience of obtaining marble almost cost-free; and the sale of rude marble and of sculptured articles forms an important branch of traffic. The famous Carrara marble is a white saccharine limestone, which derives its value from its texture and purity. The quarries have been wrought from the age of Augustus, and seem to be now as inexhaustible as ever. Pop. about 50,000.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Carrara still lives by its marble, and Collier's guess in 1921 that the quarries were "as inexhaustible as ever" has held: the Apuan Alps yield well over a million tonnes a year, more than in either account's day. What has changed is how it comes out and where it goes. Diamond-wire saws and heavy trucks replaced the ox teams and the marble railway Aiton's praised in 1910 (the line was abandoned in the 1960s), and the 20,000 quarrymen Aiton's counted are now a workforce in the low thousands; a large share of the stone is crushed to calcium carbonate powder for paper, plastics, paint and toothpaste rather than carved. The scale of the cutting has also made Carrara a conservation quarrel, with the quarries now hemmed by the Apuan Alps regional park created in 1985.
Written for this edition, 2026.