Lasa marble – the white gold from the Alps

The Lasa marble, which is extracted from the Jennwand near Laas (Lasa) in South Tyrol (Alto Adige) in the very north of Italy, is an exceptionally hard, durable, resistant material which wears well in adverse weather conditions. It began earning a prestigious reputation for itself around the middle of the XIX century and has been known as Tyrolean Marble or Vinschgau Valley Marble over the years.

Even though marble has only been quarried commercially and in relatively large quantities at Laas since the middle of the last century, in 1848, the rights to quarrying the local marble were taken over of a certain Bernhard Schweitzer, a sculptor from Munich, the regional capital of Bavaria in Germany. These quarries then supplied stone to Schwanthaler, sculptor at the court of Ludwig I of Bavaria. In 1865, a certain Johannes Steinhäuser arrived from Karlsruhe and founded the “Laas Marble Company”, the first important company of its kind in the region. It owes much of its fame to having been presented by two merchants of the Imperial Geological Office at the Vienna World Exhibition in the year 1873. It soon became the favourite material of various well-known XIX century architects and sculptors. Josef Lechner later started extracting marble from the Weißwasser (White Water) quarry in 1883. These men were indeed the great pioneers of the marble industry at Laas. The Lasa marble is still now a salient feature of certain architectural styles, especially from the Neoclassical period, in big cities such as Vienna, Munich and Berlin. Among the most famous works that have employed the Lasa marble we would like to mention the majestic Athena-Pallas fountain opposite the parliament building in Vienna, the monument to Queen Victoria in front of Buckingham Palace in London and the Heinrich Heine monument in New York. A final mention must also go to the over 90.000 Lasa marble crosses celebrating US soldiers who died in WWII, crosses that the Americans required to be built in their military cemeteries across four continents using the finest marble available in the world. The turn of the century saw the peak of the marble trade in the area and the raw material was shipped to countries both near and far including European states as well as to foreign royal families and the United States of America. Today, sculptures made from Lasa marble can be admired as far afield as Ryadh, Kuala Lumpur, Auroville in India, Abu-Dhabi, London, Memphis Tennessee USA and Singapor.

Lasa marble comes in a variety of types according to its appearance, markings and colour. We produce ten different marbles at Laas which are divided into two categories - Lasa Bianco (White Lasa Marble) and Lasa Venato (Veined Lasa Marble).

Picture: "Weißwasserbruch" from Paul Graf/Lasa Marmo