Seravezza is where the Apuan Alps meet the Versilia coast in northern Tuscany. Behind the beaches of Forte dei Marmi, the mountains rise abruptly, white with marble scars, and Seravezza sits at the mouth of a valley where two rivers join. The Palazzo Mediceo, built in the 1560s for Cosimo I de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, was a summer residence and a base for overseeing the region's marble quarries and silver mines. It is one of the Medici villas and gardens inscribed on the UNESCO list in 2013, and today it hosts museums and exhibitions.
The marble is everywhere. Michelangelo came to these mountains in the early sixteenth century to open quarries on Monte Altissimo, above Seravezza, at the request of the Medici pope Leo X, and the marble roads he planned are part of local legend. The quarries are still worked, and the landscape is cut by giant white terraces visible from far away. Pietrasanta, nearby, is a town of sculptors and marble workshops.
For riders, the road from Seravezza up through the valley toward Arni and over the Passo del Cipollaio is a superb route, climbing in tight hairpins through chestnut woods and past quarries, with a tunnel through the mountain and a descent into the Garfagnana on the other side. Marble trucks use these roads on weekdays, and the surfaces can be slippery with marble dust, especially when wet. Weekends are quieter, but the coast below is busy in summer.
Seravezza is small, but Querceta, three kilometres away, has fuel and supermarkets. The coast towns of Forte dei Marmi and Viareggio have everything, though prices are high in summer. Try the lardo di Colonnata, cured pork fat aged in marble tubs in the nearby quarry village. Come in spring or autumn, when the coast is calm and the mountains are clear, and the contrast between the white marble and the blue sea is at its most striking.