Palmaria
Wild island quarried for centuries for gleaming black-and-gold marble prized by Roman and royal builders.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to Palmaria in Cinque Terre uncovers the thirty quarries that once cut a glossy black-and-gold marble called portoro from the island's cliffs, shipped out for two thousand years to Rome, Genoa, and beyond. It traces the stone into named landmarks like Michelangelo's Moses at San Pietro in Vincoli and Rome's San Giovanni Laterano, and into Louis the Fourteenth's palace projects at Versailles, Marly, and Compiegne. Walk south to Pozzale, where rusted cranes and stone ruins from the quarrymen still line the path.
This audio guide was created using AI.
Similar places
Chiesa di San Giovanni Battista
Striped Gothic church of marble and serpentine, crowned by a carved marble rose window.
Campiglia Tramonti
Clifftop stone hamlet where a living school still carves the local rock by hand.
Chiesa di San Pietro
Black-and-white banded Gothic church fused to a bare cliff, once repurposed as a coastal gun battery.
Parco Nazionale delle Cinque Terre
Cliffside national park stitched together by ancient dry-stone terraces and coastal hiking trails.
Church of St. Margaret of Antioch
Slate church perched on a seaside rock, with a forty-meter octagonal bell tower crowned by an ogival dome.
Grotta Azzurra
Sea cave reached only by rowing boat, its hidden walls lit blue by refracted underwater sunlight.