Historic pine trees are being cut down in Carrara to resurface a sidewalk on the waterfront

They are already present in postcards of Carrara from the 1950s, they are a familiar presence for anyone who has spent their summers or vacations in the city, they are an important ecological garrison for the production of oxygen and the absorption of CO2, and they are very healthy trees: they are the pines of Viale Colombo in Marina di Carrara, the maritime hamlet of the city of marble. Plants that, according to vintage images, are surely more than sixty years old, and which constitute one of the most recognizable presences on the Apuan waterfront: from Sarzana to Viareggio, there are no other localities that have chosen the domestic pine as the tree to adorn their seaside boulevards.

Now, however, this historical presence on the Carrara Riviera is in danger of disappearing forever: as is well known, the root systems of pine trees create problems for the asphalt, causing cracks, unevenness, and lifting of the road pavement. The Municipality of Carrara, administered by a junta of the 5 Star Movement, has therefore thought of solving the problem (for now limited to a sidewalk, which use has moreover reconverted into a kind of unrestricted parking lot) with a drastic action, that is, quoting from the Municipality’s feasibility study, the “felling of existing pine trees and removal of their stump,” the “formation of new asphalt paving,” and the “planting of new plant species.” And also in the feasibility study, it is stated that with regard to the planting of new plants, “at this early design stage, the palm tree ’washingtonia robusta’ was chosen.” at the moment the washingtonia robusta, also known as the “Mexican palm” (to be clear, it is the tall palm usually seen on the shorelines of cities in California or Florida), still turns out to be the essence of choice to replace the pinus pinea trees that currently flank Colombo Avenue. The felling started yesterday: the first batch involves the removal of seventeen pines in the first section of the avenue, and the City’s idea is to remove all the pines from Colombo Avenue. In short, another pine fight after those fought in two neighboring localities (unfortunately with negative outcomes for the trees, felled in both cases), namely in La Spezia, where octogenarian pines were removed in Piazza Verdi to make way for a highly criticized intervention by Daniel Buren, and in San Terenzo, where the pine grove in Piazza Brusacà was razed to make way for another very questionable urban intervention (which replaced twenty pines with six holm oaks).

Felling of pine trees in Marina di Carrara

Felling of pine trees in Marina di Carrara

Felling of pine trees in Marina di Carrara

Postcard of Marina di Carrara from 1956

The operation that will turn Marina di Carrara into a kind of Apuan Palm Beach is also justified by the junta on the basis of the historical presence of palm trees on the Versilia coastline: in the major works since the 1920s and 1930s, palm trees (in different species) have in fact been the main choice for the waterfronts of many coastal towns. “Pines have to stay in the pine forest,” the town planning alderman of the Municipality of Carrara reminded in a video, and for this reason they will be replaced with palm trees, which, the alderman stresses again, “are historically present in the territory of Marina di Carrara and will create uniformity with the entire coastline from Viareggio to the border with Liguria.” And the robust washingtonia option, the alderman went on to emphasize again in a Facebook post, is “a rational choice based on solid historical research.”

Of course: no one questions the fact that the roots of the lodgepole pine create problems for the asphalt, nor do we question the presence of palm trees decades ago. However, as citizens, one must ask why such a heartfelt decision by the local population was made with unusual speed by the Carrara junta, and especially without the slightest involvement of the inhabitants. As non-experts in botany and road paving, we wonder instead whether the felling of the pine trees is really the only solution to remedy the problem of the torn sidewalks. But the writer, as a journalist who deals with cultural heritage and landscape for a living, cannot help but point out that when the alderman states that “palm trees are historically present in the Marina di Carrara area” to justify the cutting down of seventeen healthy pine trees on the basis that there were also palm trees in our area, and that “palm trees will create uniformity on the coastline from Viareggio to the Ligurian border,” there are several issues that do not seem to be taken into consideration, but which anyone concerned with art and landscape has a duty to highlight.

First point: in art history and landscape history there is a concept called "layering," and the current debate is about how to respect the layering of a place. Deleting pine trees that have been present in that stretch of the waterfront for almost a century (as indeed evidenced by photos from the 1950s, where there are palm trees, but where it is possible to see already planted even the pines that the municipality is removing in these hours) means deliberately and arbitrarily erasing a piece of the city’s history, regardless of what was there before in place of the pines. Second point: pines are historically part of the Apuan, Versilian, Tuscan landscape. A stroll through any museum displaying works by artists active between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries may well testify that all the painters who passed through these areas even in times earlier than the planting of the waterfront pines (Nomellini, Carrà, Rosai, Chini, Pagni, Tosi, Soffici, Viani, Dazzi) painted pines, not palms (and even before them, many foreign artists who traveled throughout Italy were fascinated by the pines they encountered in the Tuscan and Latium countryside).

The pine tree, after all, connotes the Apuo-versiliese area much more than the palm tree. The alderman quoted the Tuscany Region’s landscape plan, where it says that the landscape modifications of the 1920s and 1930s included “the construction of the Littorio promenade (4 km long, 30 m wide, 15 of which are intended for sidewalks), which connects Marina di Carrara with Marina di Massa, and which made it possible to shape the nineteenth-century idea ”of the seamless scenic promenade dotted with palm trees," masterfully interpreted by Moses Levy in one of his private collection paintings(Walk under the Palm Trees) from 1932: However, no consideration is given to the fact that the palm tree is of recent introduction (while the pine tree has characterized the Tuscan landscape for centuries, however much twentieth-century urbanism has preferred it to the palm tree on the waterfronts), nor to the fact that Levy, as an artist of Tunisian origin and who loved to return to Tunisia as soon as he could, was very fond of the palm trees that reminded him of the scenery of his homeland.

Claude Lorrain, View with Pine Trees (ca. 1640; pen and brown ink on paper, 15.7 x 12.5 cm; Haarlem, Teylers Museum)

Hendrik Voogt, Italian Landscape with Pine Trees (1807; oil on canvas, 101.5 x 138.5 cm; Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum)

Plinio Nomellini, Pineta (ca. 1900; oil on canvas, 85 x 85 cm; Private collection)

Carlo Carrà, Pagliai (1929; oil on canvas, 69 x 90 cm; Piacenza, Galleria dArte Moderna Ricci Oddi)

Ardengo Soffici, I pini (1924; oil on canvas, 93.5 x 94.5 cm; Private collection)

Galileo Chini, Villette in pineta a Viareggio (1930; oil on panel, 44 x 55 cm; Private collection)

One can then agree with the statement that pine trees would look better in a pine forest, but those that the municipality is now cutting down had nevertheless become part of a recognizable piece of landscape. Because here comes the third point: plants also contribute to the creation of a community’s sense of belonging (and we are well experiencing this in these hours). And the creation of a sense of belonging is built over decades, if not centuries. As of today, the community of Carrara finds itself deprived (without having been involved in the discussions at all!) of an important part of its sense of belonging (and this is not to put on the plate terms like “identity” and “memory” that are very complex and elusive and whose treatment requires a bit of in-depth study).

Finally, fourth point: when it says that the palm trees will create “uniformity,” the administration is actually advocating what art and landscape historians would call, in cases like these, "homogenization," and that is something that is usually fought against. If the pines on Colombo Avenue represent a unicum, by the junta’s own admission, then so much the better: the fact that their presence is unmatched on all coastal roads from Liguria to Pisa should be all the more reason to preserve these magnificent plants. Now, no one doubts the urgency and usefulness of fixing the road pavement in the avenue affected by the work. And the municipality is obviously not doing anything illegal: the replacement of trees with mature specimens “of the same species or of native or otherwise historically naturalized species typical of the places” (as the text of Presidential Decree 31 of Feb. 13, 2017, states) is allowed by the regulations on landscape authorization. And washingtonia robusta is a species that, in Versilia, is historically naturalized. But it is still a recently introduced plant; its appearance on Colombo Avenue would erase the last sixty years of history (at the very least), it would destroy a unique case, and it is an essence that is far from the sentiment of citizens. Therefore, the question arises whether other solutions cannot be found, with the hope that the municipality may revise its plans.

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