Last Friday was marble day. By that, I mean that last Friday we set off for Tivoli, some 30 km north-east of Rome and one time popular summer resort for a variety of ancient Roman dudes, ranging from the poets Catullus and Horace to the Emperors Trajan and Hadrian.
Then as now, however, Tivoli was also a great big marble quarry. Much of the travertine that adorns, or adorned, ancient Roman buildings was dug out of vast quarries in the area around Tivoli.
Deposit after deposit of huge marble slabs, much of it for export, suggest that business is thriving while, just outside modern Tivoli, you can still see the huge, working quarries where toy-like lorries and little men are digging at the bright cream slabs of rock far below.
The reason for our trip to Tivoli was to buy marble for ongoing home improvements. In Italy, marble is a norm rather than an expensive luxury.
You find it on the steps, floors, window-sills, sinks and walls of almost every type of building, from the foyer of a plush five-star hotel to the public loo here in Trevignano.
Travertine, for example, the most commonly used marble in these parts, costs between IR£12 and £16 per square metre and is often much cheaper than floor tiles. When you come to buy marble for your bathroom sink or kitchen top you do not consult a glossy mail-order catalogue or call up a relevant Internet site.
No, you are taken along by the marmista, the marble-cutter, to personally inspect and select.
Maurizio was our guide last week. He comes from three generations of marble-cutters and his father learned his trade in Carrara, Tuscany, the place where a certain Buonarroti Michelangelo used to regularly turn up and select the blocks from which to knock out his latest little Renaissance masterpiece.
Selecting the marble meant walking around the yards of various Tivoli suppliers where the many different and brightly coloured marbles are displayed in slabs, approximately two metres by four, stacked up in long lines. In many of the yards, our walkabouts were accompanied by the dull, rhythmic sound of gigantic saws working their way through a massive block, perhaps 5 cubic metres in size, to the accompaniment of a consistent cascade of water (to kill off the dust and keep the machinery cool). If all goes well, the saw gets through the block in the course of a working day.
When it came to selection, Maurizio's eye told him all he needed to know. Sometimes, he would run his hand over a slab, looking for potential cracks.
Watch out for marble with a net backing on it, he warned. This means that it is fragile and liable to crack.
If you are not sure, he added, then take a bucket of water and throw it at the slab and just wait and watch.
If the marble is good, no water will leak through. If you get damp patches on the other side, then forget it.
Marble, of course, brings with it its own specialised vocabulary. Just take travertine, for example. It can be chiaro, noce, navona, or paglierino (clear, nut, rape or straw-coloured) while the finish may be grezzo, lucido, semi-lucido or stuccato (rough, shiny, semi-shiny or filled-in).
Even the way the edges are rounded off involves its own terminology - there is a becco di civetta (owl's beak) or a toro (bull) finish and many others besides.
On our way home from Tivoli, we stopped at a bar outside the town for a coffee. It came as no surprise to find that every inch of the bar from the floor to the counter tops and back was covered in a variety of bright marbles.
Local business is local business.