ABSTRACT
The use of coloured marbles in architecture flourished in the Roman period; a specific use of these stone materials was the opus sectile, an inlay work consisting of a combination of different slabs of geometrical shapes to make dozens of patterns useful for wall veneering or flooring; in some cases the coloured marbles were also used to make architectural elements, such as column shafts, lintels, cornices, etc. The term “coloured marble” includes metamorphic limestones (marble in the proper sense), granites and other igneous rocks (diorite, gabbro, porphyry), skeletal limestones (lumachella), sedimentary or metamorphic breccias, alabaster, etc. The importance and fame of coloured marbles are reported through literary references: the Latin authors, the medieval reuse, the translations of Vitruvius’s De architectura, the first approach on naturalistic basis, the modern scientific methods, the current archaeological and petrographical studies to find the ancient quarry sites and to define the geological origin of each “marble”. Finally, a complete description of coloured marbles used in Antiquity is reported, together with the concordance of the different names attributed to the same material.
