Historical overview
The quarry present in the village of Zandobbio is the unique and currently active quarry that extracts Zandobbio Marble, commercially known as “Zandobbio White Marble” or “Zandobbio Pink Marble”, depending on the predominant chromatic element. Zandobbio marble was already used during the Roman age in order to enrich architectural elements and to build statues; a lot of Latin epigraphs of Bergamo area are inscribed on this material, thanks to its adaptability to a fine stone-cutting and to the facility for the transport by river. The employment of this material in the past centuries in Bergamo area is proved by different monuments nowadays still present.
Among these, it is worth remembering one of the stumps that constitute Sant’Alessandro Column in Bergamo and the portal, the altar, the walled-up gravestones on the external foundation of the apse of San Giorgio in Campis Church, all created around 1100.
In the period that comprises the centuries from the late Middle Ages until the nineteenth century, many works were carried out with Zandobbio stone: the Contarini fountain in Vecchia Square, the Dolphin Fountain in Pignolo Street, Sant’Agostino and San Giacomo doors, the façade of the Prepositurale Church of Zandobbio with its majestic interior, the monolithic columns of the Prepositurale Church of Trescore Balneario and the pillars and the steps of Villa Terzi Canton.
During the twentieth century the Vescovi family became the owner of the quarry and they create a real sculpture school whose results are clear in numerous buildings and monuments of Bergamo area (the most important are the Curnasco bell tower, the Prepositurale Church bell tower of Seriate, the façade of the Prepositurale Church of Gorlago, the completion of the Scamozzi Palace façade in Vecchia Square, where, on the large windows, one can admire the statues sculpted by the Vescovi brothers).
The stone was also used on a large scale for many building constructions of Bergamo: from the Italian Credit Institution to the old base of the Banca Popolare of Bergamo, from the Caduti Tower to the Post Palace.
Technical features
From a geologic point of view the material belongs to the unit named “Zandobbio dolomite” of the Rhaetian-Hettangian age, characterized by a remarkable thickness (up to 150 metres) and by three homogeneous lithopones called DZ1 (characterized by white or pink dolomites), DZ2 (characterized by light grey or white calcarenite oolites) , DZ3 (it presents light grey pinkish dolomites).
Employment
Today the marble is used for renovation works and for the renovation of the local territory monuments. In this connection in 2007 the two columns, placed at the beginning of XX Settembre Street in Bergamo, have been entirely realized with “Zandobbio Pink Marble”.
Both columns are 6,80 metres high and they have been put in the zone that, in the past, was known as Contrada di Prato, link between the Legna square (now Pontida square) and il Prato, that is the border of the urban fair that rose between the present Sentierone and Libertà Square. The columns have been placed in the same position of the columns that disappeared in the night between the 3rd and the 4th of June 1882. Nowadays the marble is used for renovation works (as already mentioned), outdoor furniture (benches, fountains) and inner coating (flooring, bathrooms, steps…).
