Featured on PDR in the collection A Book of Stone: Adam Wirsing’s Marmora (1776)

“Marble is a brilliant material”, exclaims the art historian Michael Greenhalgh, while listing the stone’s admirable properties: beauty, solidity, polish, and the ability to endure. Without this stately rock, the Great Pyramid of Giza, Parthenon, and Taj Mahal would have decayed to dust long ago. From the Greek word for “shining stone”, marble illuminates the past by letting it stay visible. And the words we use to distinguish its types are almost as lustrous as the thing itself. Calacatta, Talathello, Carrara, Levadia, Makrana . . . and more.