The quarry is the place from which the marble is mined. In Carrara, nowadays, there are eighty-one active quarries in the three mining basins of the Apuan Alps that form the Carrione valley: the Torano basin, the Miseglia basin and the Colonnata basin, which are named after the three mountain villages in their very proximity. All Carrara quarries are at heights and it is necessary to use roads which are often long and curvy to reach them; the access to some of them is permitted to authorised vehicle only, due to their conditions and the difficulties to travel them. Within the basins, there are different typologies of quarry which are divided into two main categories: the open-pit quarries and the underground ones.

The open-pit quarries are the most numerous ones and it is possible to identify further categories among them.

The most recognisable quarries are the ones at the top of the mountain, the so-called “cava culminale”: with the rock quarried progressively downward, which gives the mountain a stair-like appearance, with the steps following the quarrying orientation. The “cava a mezzacosta” or “cava di versante” is the quarry on the side of the mountain. Even for this typology, the quarrying activity has the mountain look like it has steps (which, depending on the mountain shape, may resemble an amphitheatre). To conclude, the “cava a fossa” or “cava a pozzo” is the quarry developed vertically as a pit, which is often due to the lack of lateral space where to mine. It is common that mountain side quarries turn into pit quarries, because the development of the quarrying activity following a certain vein may face areas for which the vertical excavation is the only possible way.

Underground mining quarries are those in which the marble is extracted inside the mountain. In Carrara, there are the so called “sotto tecchia” quarries: those are the ones that undergo a transformation from open pit quarries to underground ones. This category includes, for example, the Polvaccio quarry, from which the marble block turned into the Pietà by Michelangelo was mined.