DUCE’S COLUMN

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 698, 25 June 1929, Page 9

DUCE’S COLUMN

Vast Marble Monolith Cut From Quarry TAKEN 30 MILES A YEAR <Australian and N.Z. Press Association) Reed. 9 a.m. LONDON, Monday. The “Manchester Guardian” correspondent at Carrara reports that the famous marble monolith 60 feet tall and weighing 380 tons, which was cut out of the Carrara marble quarry a year ago, was launched today on a specially-designed raft and shipped to the mouth of the Tiber, to await a full tide. In the autumn it will be erected at a new forum dedicated to the Duce, and will be called the Colonna Mussolini. It has taken a year to bring the great column 30 miles from the quarry. Sometimes it was launched into swift mountain torrents and sometimes it was drawn by 100 oxen up steep mountain roads. It was encased in a wooden structure, and propelled by large logs of wood placed underneath —an engineering feat only equalled by the Egyptians with Cleopatra’s Needle, which now stands on the Thames Embankment. It is the largest and most beautiful piece of marble ever quarried in Italy, being of a pale grey hue.