Lizzatura
In Italy, the Lizzatura is the transport of stones from quarries on slides and slides. The stone blocks were secured with hemp or wire ropes. This method was used in ancient times. Today it no longer has any economic significance. The largest block of stone of modern times, the Mussolini Obelisk , was brought down from the Carrara mountains in 1928 .
method
The route prepared for this special stone transport is called Lizza and the two wooden "sled runners" of the means of transport are called Lizze . This transport method was used wherever a means of transport with wheels could not be used or where extremely large blocks of stone had to be transported. The means of transport was a kind of sledge, which consisted only of two long beech or oak pieces of wood on which stone blocks were attached. In the quarries of Carrara, the sled was secured with three ropes, with which the loads could be transported slowly and in a controlled manner on angular wood down the valley.
The largest block of stone that was ever transported with the Lizzatura was the Mussolini Obelisk with a weight of about 300 tons. It was installed at the Foro Italico in Rome in 1929 .
It is believed that this stone transport method goes back to ancient Egypt . As far as is known, this transport method was not used in Germany. It was practiced in South Tyrol until 1930 and in the Carrara quarries in Italy until 1960. In the meantime, a lizzatura is held annually on the first Sunday in August in the mountains above Carrara in order to preserve this tradition.
history
According to a drawing in a burial place near Dair al-Berscha , around 2000 BC. It is believed that even in ancient Egypt, large stone statues were transported in a technique similar to the lizzatura, using water as a lubricant. The pillars for the vestibule of the Pantheon , which have a weight of 200 tons and come from the Roman quarries of Mons Porphyrites in Egypt, were probably transported to ships for kilometers using this technique. There are traces of the use of this old transport technology in the quarries of Pentelic marble from ancient Greek times , whereby, in contrast to Carrara, two instead of three ropes were used to secure the sled. During the Renaissance , the limestone quarries of Istria also used the lizzatura, which was very similar to that of Carrara. A painting by the Italian artist S. Salvioni from the early 19th century shows the marble transport in Carrara. This picture also shows that at the end of the downhill section the safety ropes were removed and teams of oxen took over the further transport on the level.
Lizzatura use
Carrara
In order to carry out the lizzatura, a slope had to be built from the quarry. It led from the quarry forecourt to the valley or to a road. There the several meters wide toboggan run ended on a ledge that was higher than the road to make it easier to load the rough stones onto vehicles with wheels.
During the construction of the route, unevenness in the terrain had to be leveled out with stone gravel. If the track was used more often, transverse timbers were embedded in it. To secure the rope, wooden posts ( called piri ) made of hardwood were positioned ten meters apart on the edge of the slope in prepared holes in the rock and fixed with wedges.
The sled construction in the area of the Carrara marble consisted of two six to twelve meter long beech or oak trunks. The charge ( called Carica ) was placed on top of this.
The sled load was usually 15 to 25 tons and consisted of several individual raw blocks. There were three ropes attached to the sled that were supposed to slow it down so that it could slide slowly and safely down the valley. Since the hemp ropes ( called canapi ) tore and this led to accidents, steel ropes were used in Carrara from 1920.
The three transport ropes were looped around recessed wooden posts and released accordingly. At the beginning of the downhill section, the slide had to be moved with levers in order to move it downhill under its own weight. As the ropes slackened, the sledge slid slowly and in a controlled manner down to the valley. In alternation, it was ensured that the loaded sledge was always secured with two ropes. If necessary, sliding the sledge was made easier by lathering the angular wood ( called parati ). A foreman directed the sledge loaded with the rough stones with his transport team ( called Lizzatori ). The Lizzatori had the most dangerous place to work because they had to pick up the angular wood behind the sled and put it in front of the sled. In 1907, a particularly dangerous Lizzaturi route north of Monte Sargo was replaced by a transport cable car that was able to transport smaller blocks of stone. However, the larger ones still had to be transported with the Lizzatura. This industrial monument was completely dismantled after the Second World War .
The Lizzatura was used in Carrara until 1960. It was no longer in use afterwards, as the stone quarrying areas in the Apuan Alps around Carrara had been opened up by a network of roads that could be driven by trucks. Since then, however, a traditional lizzatura has been held every year on the first Sunday in August near the small town of Miseglia, which lies above Carrara.
Laas and Göflan
Until 1930, blocks of Lasa marble slid from the 1500 to 2250 meters high quarries around Lasa using the Lizzatura method in a slightly modified form. The marble blocks were braked with ropes on so-called grinding trees and loaded onto sledges on shallower sections. In 1882, near Göflan , not far from Laas, a downhill railway was built in which round timbers were laid across. The raw blocks, which were secured with hemp ropes on wooden posts attached to the side, were carried down to the valley. When the marble inclined railway was put into operation in Laas in 1930 , raw block transport with the Lizzatura was no longer necessary. The railway is still in operation today.
More places
In Veneto and Lombardy , the lizzatura was also used in the local quarry areas. Since these mining areas are in flat terrain, no angular timbers were placed in front of the sledge, but round timbers. These logs served as rollers that made transport easier and could control the load. There were holes on the edge of the rollers into which rods could be inserted. This enabled the loaded sledge to be moved with human power.
Lizzatura transport of monoliths
Mussolini Obelisk in Rome
The largest monolith of modern times that was transported using the lizzatura method was the Mussolini obelisk made of Carrara marble, which was erected on the Foro Italico in Rome. The obelisk and other monumental architectural orders made of marble were an attempt by the fascist government to gloss over the crisis of the entire Italian economy and marble production with spectacular large-scale orders. These state orders were to be equivalent to the great works of the Roman emperors.
In 1928 the quarrying and uncovering of this large marble block began in the Carbonara quarry in the Apuan Alps near Fantiscritti . After the block was detached from the rock layer in one piece, it was 19.00 × 2.35 × 2.35 meters in size. This marble block was enclosed by a wooden beam structure weighing 50 tons to protect it from damage and to enable transport. The marble block was secured in transit with several steel cables. A natural incision in the Marble Mountains, the so-called Grande Canale near Fantiscritti, was used as a slide. The monolith was precisely steered through a bridge below the quarry.
On the plain, more than 30 carts of oxen pulled him eleven kilometers to the port in Marina di Carrara , using 70,000 liters of soap to optimize gliding on the wooden planks. The transport involved 50 men and it lasted eight months. In the port of Marina di Carrara, the raw block was pushed from a ramp onto the Apuano barge , which had been laid dry. The barge then cast off in June 1929 and transported the monolith across the Mediterranean and on the Tiber to Rome. In Rome the obelisk was unloaded and pulled through the streets with a tractor to its place of erection Foro Italico. To set it up, a ramp was built, the monolith was placed in a steel frame, positioned vertically using hydraulic presses and placed on the base.
Moltke monument in Berlin
A block of stone made of Lasa marble weighing 80 tons and measuring 30 cubic meters was transported from the quarries in the Lasa mountains using the Lizzatura technology. From 1903 on, the monument for Field Marshal Moltke in Berlin was created. 22 men were involved in this transport from the quarry to the valley. The transport was secured with 13 ropes.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Luciana and Tiziano Mannoni: Marble, Material and Culture . Callwey, Munich 1980, ISBN 3-7667-0505-9 , p. 97
- ↑ a b Luciana and Tiziano Mannoni: Marble, Material and Culture . Callwey, Munich 1980, ISBN 3-7667-0505-9 , p. 215 f.
- ↑ Luciana and Tiziano Mannoni: Marble, Material and Culture . Callwey, Munich 1980, ISBN 3-7667-0505-9 , p. 97 f.
- ↑ a b Luciana and Tiziano Mannoni: Marble, Material and Culture . Callwey, Munich 1980, ISBN 3-7667-0505-9 , pp. 99-102
- ↑ Luciana and Tiziano Mannoni: Marble, Material and Culture . Callwey, Munich 1980, ISBN 3-7667-0505-9 , pp. 105-107
- ↑ stoneproject.org ( Memento of the original from March 26, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. : La Lizzatura | Carrara, Italy , accessed September 2, 2012
- ↑ haben.at : Wolfgang Morscher, Hubert Tscholl: The marble railway in Laas - a technical marvel , accessed on September 2, 2012
- ↑ Luciana and Tiziano Mannoni: Marble, Material and Culture . Callwey, Munich 1980, ISBN 3-7667-0505-9 , p. 101 f.
- ↑ Ibario Bessi (photos), Romano Bavastro, Rosario Bertolucci, Vittorio Prayer (Text): Luci di Marmo . P. 46 Pacini Editore, Pisa. 1989 (Italian / English)
- ↑ a b c Mario Pinzari: Methods, techniques and technologies for quarrying ornamental stones. In: Marble in the World , in English, Società Editrice Apuana, Carrara 1990, p. 164.
- ↑ a b Ibario Bessi (photos), Romano Bavastro, Rosario Bertolucci, Vittorio Prayer (text): Luci di Marmo . P. 174. Pacini Editore, Pisa. 1989 (Italian / English)
- ↑ Ibario Bessi (photos), Romano Bavastro, Rosario Bertolucci, Vittorio Prayer (Text): Luci di Marmo . P. 47. Pacini Editore, Pisa. 1989 (Italian / English)
- ↑ tecneum.eu : Laas marble incline , longest braking mountain in Europe . Retrieved September 4, 2012
