The term pumpkin identifies the fruits of several cultivar plants belonging to the Cucurbitaceae family. It was imported to Europe in the 16th century from America, where it was already cultivated, by Spanish colonists.
The pumpkin is round in shape with a smooth, slightly ribbed skin and its colour ranges from deep yellow to orange.
It is particularly used in autumn cooking and is famously used in connection with the Halloween festival, when it is hollowed out to form the so-called Jack O'Lantern.
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At the foot of the Apuan Alps, Carrara is unique in the world for its marble quarries. The “white gold of the Apuan Alps”: this is how the marble of Carrara is defined, a precious stone with which important works have been realised and that has made this town, for centuries devoted to its extraction and processing, great.
One of the first people to venture into marble quarrying were the Romans who, by inserting beams of fig wood inside natural fissures in the rock, filled these with water until they were completely impregnated and caused the rock to split. This extraction technique remained unchanged, if not with minor variations, until the Renaissance when Michelangelo began to frequent the Carrara area to directly choose the raw material for his works: it was from Carrara, transported along the Arno, that the block from which the Maestro sculpted the famous David came.
Marble thus became an important raw material for the construction, furnishing and decoration of public buildings and patrician residences.
Even today, skilful artists and craftsmen still work this material with mastery, creating stupendous works of art and decorative objects that become true furnishing accessories.