Fiume di pietra

An underground but mighty river links the cities of Carrara in Tuscany and Barre in Vermont. It is a river through which flow art, history and memory. But above all it is a river that carries with it the tragic epic of an entire community of emigrants from all over Europe engaged in the everlasting and titanic struggle against stone. A river that rises from the quarries of the Apuan Alps, where Michelangelo used to go to obtain the blocks of marble for his masterpieces. And that finds its outlet in the American state of Vermont, amidst dramatic social battles and deaths by freezing, amidst the sorrow of emigration and the splendor of the art of sculpture, amidst anarchic utopia, hope and tragedy.