Long ago, when Romans wanted to build a new temple, they would head to the nearby quarries of Tivoli, chisel out blocks of porous rock called lapis tiburtinus — now known as travertine — and float the cargo downstream on rafts to craftsmen in town.
That’s how they made the Colosseum 2,000 years ago. That’s how they made St. Peter’s Basilica and Bernini’s great colonnade hundreds of years later. Today, the same quarries that built Rome with their distinctive pock-marked travertine are still being dug out to build a new generation of churches, temples and mosques around the world — as well as banks, museums, government buildings and private homes.
