The quarrymen look almost awkward now, physically unready: no longer the heroes of the mountain, once permanently at risk of their lives.

All of this because of new technology, which makes the raw material far easier to extract. The mountains are stripped of their beauty twice as fast, under pressure from wealthy Middle Eastern oil magnates. Half the quarries are now owned by the Bin Laden family, which also sells into the lucrative Chinese market.

A market that finds cheap labour in the great red country, and in doing so makes survival impossible for local processing firms. The quarrying contaminates the rivers of Massa-Carrara with "marmettola", the fine marble slurry that cements the water table, altering the natural course of the water and making floods worse.

This is the reality behind the pure whiteness of Carrara marble, unique in the world. One of the symbols of Italian excellence, turned into a dysfunctional, polluting machine, with little thought given to protecting the resource it lives on.