Marble and stone, more generally classified as rocks, have always been used in the world of architecture for the construction of major works. The reasons for this choice are primarily to be found in the structural qualities of the material with excellent workability, mechanical strength and extraordinary aesthetic characteristics. The Greeks, for example, used the Pentelic for the construction of their temples while the Romans used the famous Travertine for the construction of the Colosseum and many other works. Pentelico is a fine-grained crystalline marble with an ivory white background with light green veins and shades tending to golden yellow, while Travertine is a limestone with an ivory background characterized by the characteristic macro-porosity.

In Italy, the period that consecrated the excellence of marble in architecture and sculpture was certainly the Renaissance, thanks to the works of great artists such as Michelangelo and Donatello. The marbles that were used by the masters were those extracted in the Apuan-Versilian area, in particular the classic white Carrara marble, the white Statuario and the Calacatta. The first is characterized by a white background tending to light gray with light veins or "stakes" of dark gray tending to black, the second has a pure white background with marked dark gray veins while the third has a background white tending to ivory with light gray veins.