Marble (Marmore)

Marble (Mármore)

13 November 2007

We mentioned in a previous post that Villa Viçosa is the Marble Capital. With directions from our campground owner we were able to get up close and familiar by walking right up to an open pit quarry, not something we could have done in other parts of Europe or North America. Can you imagine walking unescorted into this type of complex in say British Columbia?

And then strolling in your runners and jeans up to the edge of this pit? Hey Workers' Comp, check this out!!

While those ladders look very small at the bottom of this picture, this only covers part of the depth. Let’s look a little lower. Look at the size of the guys working down there, and how small those full size steam shovels and bulldozer look. Everything washed out by reflected sun is the depth seen in the previous picture.

Here’s another perspective. This heavy machinery is all being worked without guardrails. Notice how cleanly they are able to cut the marble faces.

Some lesser grade marble is loaded for delivery to a processing plant. It’s real fun meeting these trucks on the narrow roads woven through this area.

Meanwhile, some retired guy clowns around holding up tons of marble single-handed.

The old train station (decommissioned in the 1970’s) has been converted to a local museum of marble. While a bit quaint it gives some insights into early 20^th century mining techniques and equipment. (4799)This device was used for pulling blocks of marble. “Crapaud” in French means toad; we’ll have to check a Portuguese dictionary to see whether it has a similar literal meaning in Portuguese.

This gas powered equivalent of today’s compressor-driven pneumatic hammer was used to split blocks.

Columns could be extracted by this device.

As expected in a town whose wealth came from marble, it was used in the construction and decorative features of the train station.