Seravezza

Seravezza is where Michelangelo went for his mountains. The Versilian town at the meeting of two torrents sits beneath Monte Altissimo, whose statuary marble the master himself judged and opened — Medici documents record his road-building labours here in 1518, quarrying for façades never built — and the peaks' white wounds have supplied sculptors ever since, the town's sawmills and workshops keeping the trade's living continuity between the Apuan Alps and the sea.

The Medici stamped the town with their presence: their severe villa-palace by the river — built for Cosimo I as quarry headquarters and summer refuge — belongs to the UNESCO World Heritage listing of the Medici Villas of Tuscany, its rooms now hosting the museum of work and popular traditions and ambitious summer exhibitions, a granducal address in a marble-workers' town. The Duomo's treasury adds a Ghirlandaio-school gleam; Piazza Carducci keeps the civic evenings, its cafés facing the mountain light.

Around, the choice is vertical or horizontal: upward to Azzano's chapel — with the "eye" window attributed to Michelangelo's circle — and the Altissimo trails among quarry galleries; seaward to Forte dei Marmi's beaches ten minutes down the plain, the marble's old shipping port turned Riviera. Genius in the geology, dukes by the bridge: Seravezza cut its identity from the source.