From Mountain to Masterpiece: Transporting Marble
After the blocks of marble were extracted from the quarry in Carrara, levers were used to load them onto a lizza – a simple sled made of tree trunks. The weight of the marble caused the lizza to move down the steep slope of the mountain over crude wooden tracks. Workers controlled the rate of descent using thick ropes wrapped around posts embedded in the mountainside.
When the blocks reached the base of the mountain, sturdy ox-drawn carts with solid wooden wheels took the marble to Carrara’s port, about 8 km away.
At the seaside, a system of large pulleys installed on a strong four-legged framework was used to hoist the marble. A specially constructed barge was hauled onto the beach and positioned under the raised block. The marble was lowered into the waiting barge, which was then dragged back into the water. It then sailed about 362 km south on the Tyrrhenian Sea to the mouth of the Tiber river. 
After travelling 24 km up the Tiber into the centre of Rome, the marble blocks were unloaded at a riverside dock and then transported into the city by cart.
In this detail from a seventeenth-century painting, a sculptor uses a hammer and chisel to carve a figure’s clothing.