3 – CATHEDRAL OF SAINT ANDREA (ENG)

It took three centuries to complete this architectural masterpiece made of marble. Likely built on a very ancient structure and dedicated to Saint Andrew the Apostle, its first written mention dates back to 1035. The medieval village of Carrara developed around this sacred building. Three roads meet here: one leading to Lunigiana, one to the sea, and one to the quarries—the Via Carriona, whose name clearly references the carts used to transport large marble blocks.

The 20-ray rose window is the official symbol of Carrara, a UNESCO Creative City, evoking the wheels of those carts pulled by 15–20 pairs of oxen, which carried tons of marble down to the valley. These were strong, iron-reinforced wheels, built to last, and so central to the city’s identity that they inspired its motto: “Fortitudo mea in rota” or “My strength is in the wheel.”

Built entirely of marble, its façade and architecture reflect the diverse influences and construction phases spanning the 11th to the 14th century. The quality of the work reveals how, starting as early as 1070, the Carrara valley attracted artists and sculptors from the most important schools of the time.

The collegiate church was constructed using marble as a “lost formwork” (encasing irregular stone masonry) with its visible surfaces chiseled (following Roman techniques continued in Romanesque architecture) and was later reworked and expanded with Gothic-style elements. The original Romanesque church was extended in the late medieval period on the apse side.

The floor plan is rectangular, with three naves and a semicircular apse. The façade, completed in the second half of the 14th century, features a two-tone pattern (bands of white Lunense marble and black Colonnata marble) typical of Pisan churches. The main portal is framed by an archivolt decorated with depictions from bestiaries and is surmounted by a large, elegant Gothic rose window with radial columns, each uniquely carved, radiating from the hub of the architectural wheel.

The bell tower, detached from the church, stands 33 meters tall and was built in the 14th century on a preexisting tower. The fifth level houses the bell chamber with its “castle” containing a set of four bells.

In a chamber just below the bell chamber, at the top of Carrara’s ancient cathedral tower and behind a double-leaf door, the old mechanical clock with a weight-driven mechanism is still preserved. Pellegrino Rossi donated the then-perfect and complex clock to the citizens in 1820. The entirely mechanical system, powered by the weight of three large white marble counterweights, is of Swiss origin.

The interior of the mitred abbey is 33 meters long. Its plan consists of a central nave, covered by exposed wooden trusses, and two side naves with groin vaults. The cathedral was “restored” after World War II, with some Baroque elements removed. The high altar is topped by a 14th-century crucifix on wood attributed to Lucchese painter Angelo Puccinelli, flanked by two large marble balustrades from the second half of the 16th century.

In the oratory known as the Compagnia Grande, which also includes a baptistery, there are marble fragments and inscriptions from the temple interior, two 15th–16th century baptismal fonts, and the “Ransom” altar with a high relief by Giovanni Antonio Cybei, an 18th-century sculptor-priest whose burial is located at the foot of the high altar in the same oratory.

In the presbytery area of the oratory, the Madonna del Rosario, a youthful papier-mâché work by Giovanni Antonio Cybei, is displayed, with the 14 terracotta Stations of the Cross by Professor Alterige Giorgi from 1960 arranged on either side.