Apuan Alps

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Location of the Apuan Alps in northern Italy

The Apuan Alps are located in the north-west of Tuscany between Lucca and La Spezia. They stand by their rugged form and the marble quarries significantly from the other areas of the Tuscan Apennines. Despite the name of this part of the Alps mountain range has nothing to do with the Alps in the true sense. The highest peak in the Apuan Alps is Monte Pisanino (1945 m slm ). In the name of this mountain the name of the ancient Ligurian tribe of the Apuan lives on.

Geology

The Apuan Alps are geologically involved in the Apennines. The Apuan Alps were formed in the Paleozoic era, about 240 million years ago, on the older base of shales, sandstones and breccias from. In the upper Triassic, 200 million years ago, it came to the formation of a shallow warm sea, where fossils from limestone sedimented on the sea floor. As the sea was well ventilated, to pure lime could form from which the later Carrara marble was. The deposits were first solidified into limestone.

Through continental drift overlays and shifts were different rocks instead, it emerged Slate, Phylitte, porphyry slate etc.. Sediment layers were pressed together in great depths of the earth under very high pressures and chemically modified at very high temperatures, deformed and transformed the limestone into marble.

60 million years ago the Alpine Alps formation got under way, as to moving two plates of the earth's crust cooled, Africa and Europe each other and 30 million years ago caused the Apuan Alps.

Views of Monte Nona ( 1279 m)

Marble deposits

In the western Apuan Alps, with Carrara marble is one of the largest deposits in the world where the Carrara marble is mined. The degradation of this marble is mostly in the mountains at an altitude 1000-1300 meters instead. The highest Quarry is the Cervaiole to about 1300 meters in Seravezza. The quarries have been operated in Roman times in the mountains. On the Mount Altissimo and Fantiscritti are quarries that were used during the Renaissance by Michelangelo.