Volterra is a city of art, only and irripetibile, where the same landscape contributes to exalt the halo of mystery of loneliness and of romantic sadness that pervades her/it. And' a city of stone, (city of the wind and the boulder defined her/it Of announcement) because of stone they are the roads, of stone they are his/her towers and his/her buildings and of stone they are his/her austere boundaries. All is made of a yellow-grey stone, the panchino, from which shells of rare beauty often appear on the surface; on the stone, the alabaster, its craftsmanship also founds him. The origin of the name "alabaster" it is Egyptian and it perhaps derives from the city of Alabastron, famous anciently for the manufacture of pots and amphoras destined to preserve the perfumes. Two varieties of alabaster exist: that oriental (composed of carbonate of kick) and that chalky (composed of sulfate of kick hydrate). The chalky alabaster that you/he/she is worked to Volterra, and that extracted by the subsoil of Castellina Marittima, is formed particularly in the period miocenico, subsequently to a process of sedimentation and concentration of the sulfate of contained kick in the sea waters. It deals with a candid stone that, for his/her particular softness, it is lent to be worked more easily than the marble, even if it is more delicate and less resistant to the atmospheric agents, and therefore it is proper for to reproduce in staircase redoubt the motives ornamental rich for details and to withdraw in the particular ones the human face, according to the aesthetical canons of the classical art. The Etruschis used him/it to build sarcophaguses and urns cinerarie that embellished with rich decorations representing the image of the dead (the covers) one, or with scenes of life daily, or imaginary trips in the afterlife or famous episodes of the Greek (the urn) mythology. In this craftsmanship of theirs the Etruschis used only the alabaster more appreciated, that deprived of impurity: they superficially him/it with substances mineral and certain times they covered him/it of thin gold foils. One of the greatest harvests of these urns are guarded in the Museum Etrusco Guarnacci, others can be admired, among the others, to the Louvre, to the British Museum, to the Archaeological Museum in Florence, to the Museum Vatican. The few finds in alabaster of medieval and Renaissance epoch testify the total decadence in that period of the employment of this material. The craftsmanship of the alabaster starts to rifiorire in 1600 when, further to artistic works exclusively it extends him the objects workmanship of furnishing, more commercial. You/he/she can be spoken however of true rebirth, under the quantitative and qualitative profile, only to the beginnings of 1700 when, thanks to skilled reproducers of classical works, they started him to produce objects of good level that made to know the alabaster to the whole world. According to a relationship of the Granducato in Tuscany, in 1780 they operate to Volterra eight or nine artisan shops, while in 1830 the number of the laboratories climbs to over sixty. Animator of the industry of the alabaster, in this period, it was Marcello Inghirami Fei, that knew how to unite to an exceptional artistic talent, a notable intuition for the business and great organizational abilities. Among the numerous worths of this noble volterranos are to underline that to have started for first the exploitation of the layers of Castellina, that you/they produce an alabaster of incomparable beauty (the group), and that to have created more modern fittingses of workmanship and able to produce manufactured articles of notable merit, but above all, that to have created a great school laboratory in which you/they could learn more than one hundred working students, under the direction of skilled Italian teachers and foreigners, the art of the workmanship of the alabaster, giving so beginning to an important process of growth. Up to 1870 the whole sector knew a nonstop period of expansion and affirmations in Italy and to the foreign countries. Since then, to periods of economic prosperity, they are followed, cyclically, others of deep crisis, but despite to alternate some economic conjunctures, the industry of the alabaster volterrano has continued to affirm him for the elevated merit of its products that doesn't have peers in the world. They are departed more than two thousand years from when the Etruschis began the workmanship but the alabaster of it, also among numerous difficulties, he still works to Volterra and, also not constituting the hauling sector of his/her economy anymore, it is still certainly the characterizing element of his/her culture and his/her history. Today they are few the artisan shops remained in the historical center, but to that few true artisans that work you the maintenance of the tradition and the assignment you/he/she is submitted to address the production toward the maintenance of his/her undisputed quality.