Levigliani

A village on the Apuan Alps, in the hinterland of Forte dei Marmi, run by its own residents, offers further proof that the theories of a 1994 Nobel Prize winner for economics are correct. Elinor Nostrom, the 1994 Nobel Prize winner for economics - and the first woman ever to be awarded the prize - demonstrated by analysis that communities can perfectly well manage their assets without consuming them and can even increase their value, as long as they manage them jointly as common goods.

In addition to the guided tours in the marble quarries that tourists can enjoy (tickets can be purchased in the village at Corchia Park, corckiapart.it) - and which during working hours are brought to life by the workers and the trucks transporting the marble -, and the availability of sustainable local products such as wines and cheeses, the families of Levigliani put their philosophy into practice with a museum system composed of two sections: The first, the Museo della Pietra Piegata, is a museum dedicated to the uses of marble over the millennia, while the second, the Museo di Comunità e Impresa "Lavorare Liberi", tells the story of the local community engaged in marble quarrying. An exhibition of a Ligurian Apuan burial box, found in a necropolis in the area, completes the visit. Finally, there are beauties for the eyes only: the mountains surrounding the village, the green hills sloping down to the sea of Versilia, which can also be admired from the terraced vineyards, and a system of tunnels and karstic caves, those of the Antro del Corchia, one of the largest hypogeal environments in Europe and among the largest in the world.