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Between September 23 and 26, over 1,400 companies from 50 countries descended on Verona for the 59th Marmomac, a trade show dedicated to the stone industry. Italy headed the list with 468 companies, followed by China (250), Turkey (142), Spain (70), and India (62). Turning the city into the international capital of marble, granite, ornamental stone, and advanced technologies for four days, the exhibition offered a snapshot of the state of the stone sector today. As Federico Bricolo, president of VeronaFiere, said at the conclusion of the event, “Marmomac isn’t just a trade show but a platform where, by bringing together industrial excellence, technological research, and culture, stone industries can engage with the world.”
“The economic value of the companies present,” added Adolfo Rebughini, general manager of VeronaFiere, “reflects an ecosystem that sees the event as not only a multiplier of growth and international business contacts, but also a strategic platform for seizing the opportunities offered by technological innovation. Here, companies can use these drivers to create new business directions and strengthen competitiveness.”
For the first time, Antolini exhibited at Marmomac 2025 in two complementary locations: a booth on the trade show floor and a dedicated pavilion beneath the barrel-vaulted ceiling of the nearby Gallerie Mercatali. Designed by Alessandro La Spada with a certain enigmatic tone, the booth at VeronaFiere was a compact solid volume with one of its front walls clad in Silver Roots and the Hard Rock textured finish. Stepping inside, visitors could escape the crowds and immerse themselves in the materials. The booth featured a range of surfaces in its reception, lounge, and pathways, including Cipollino GreyWave with its dynamic veining and Irish Green® with its intense elegance. Artist Murran Billi also created a site‑specific work for the booth, described as a “luminous epiphany” and dedicated to Caterina de’ Medici, who is depicted gradually appearing from the Cristallo Luminescence “Select,” a natural quartz from the firm’s Exclusive Collection.
This display of Italian materials was complemented by Padiglione Antolini®, an event staged amid the imposing postwar industrial architecture of Gallerie Mercatali. As Alberto Antolini, CEO of the company, explained, here the materials were displayed “independently, allowing each stone to express its unique identity and charm. Our aim was to offer visitors an immersive insight into the complete path of natural stone from its origins to its final form. Layer by layer, the narrative unfolded to reveal the complexity, beauty, and character of every phase.” In these light‑filled galleries, about 50 materials from the Exclusive and Natural Stone Collections were presented as the focal elements of a curated exhibition.
For Marmomac 2025, Margraf continued its collaboration with designer Raffaello Galiotto, who created an installation titled Planetario. The piece grew out of Galiotto’s ongoing work with the company as they investigate innovation, technology, materials, and aesthetics in the field of natural stone. Showcasing this material inside a wide, glazed space like rotating celestial bodies based on the cosmos, the work comprises twelve large circular slabs arranged in pairs of different stones – Breccia Bohemien and Taj Mahal, Blue Agate and Travertino Silver, Giallo Siena and Botticino Classico, Polaris Gold and Travertino Pantheon, Notre Dame and Alma, Rosso Cardinale and Bianco Covelano.
The designer drew his inspiration for the slowly rotating slabs from his childhood. “As a child. I used to lose myself in closeup views of stone. In that micro‑world of concave and convex surfaces and smooth plains, I’d create a fantastic universe, an almost infinite, expanded space that I kept all to myself,” Galiotto said. “I experience something similar when I see satellite images of our planet with rivers, mountain ranges, glaciers, and seas. Ignoring their scale, they remind me of the micro‑textures of stone in the way they disorient the eye and shatter the normal relationship between us and space.”
The installation represented and celebrated the variety and beauty of materials such as quartzite, limestone, sandstone, marble, travertine, and onyx, while showcasing technical and artisanal excellence.
Marmomac 2025 was also the setting for the official launch of Hima Soul, a new brand that grew out of a partnership between Shangyue Mining, Qamar El‑Muneir, and Marmi Ghirardi. The material is a new white marble quarried from the Himalayan foothills then crafted with artisan skill and processed using state-of-the-art technology. The brand’s slogan, “The essence of Himalayan marble,” conjures up the light, purity, and spiritual power of those peaks that form the heart of the brand. The Hima Soul range currently includes five tones of white, each with its own timeless beauty.
>> Find out more about the new Hima Soul brand.
Among a range of highlights, Marmomac regular Franchi Umberto Marmi (FUM) presented its new Carrara District project, which combines tradition, expertise, and a contemporary vision. The project is an innovative hub where design, art, and materials speak a common language to fuel contemporary projects and collaborations. And the project goes beyond marble to include leather, celebrated inside the Poltrona Frau Store.
Over a hundred marble varieties – from Bianco C to Calacatta Super Gold, Portoro, and Cipollino – coexist in the project as witnesses to geological diversity. Marble is displayed and interpreted as a living stone that, with its aesthetic and structural potential, can be modelled, carved, reinvented, and explored. “With Carrara District, we wanted to create a place that’s not just a showcase but an authentic expression of our local area and its marble heritage,” said Bernarda Franchi, vice-president of FUM. “It’s an open, living project in which our company engages with art, education, and innovation.”
One of the most anticipated events at the 59th Marmomac was an artist talk between visual artist and filmmaker Yuri Ancarani and Laura Lamonea, artistic director of ArtVerona. The session focused on Ancarani’s film The Chief, which premiered at the Venice Film Festival in 2010. Set in the Monte Bettogli quarry in Carrara, the short film features GEMEG, a family company established in 1993 by Franco Soldati. The company specializes in the quarrying, selection, cutting, and export of marble, with its most important varieties Statuario, Calacatta, Cipollino, and Zebrino.
GEMEG marble can be found in major international projects. During the construction of One World Trade Center, for example, a team of American architects visited GEMEG’s workshops once a month to select blocks and slabs for the building’s interior finishes.
At Marmomac, Quartzforms®, a Scapin Group brand, launched its new sustainable Madreterra collection, the result of research and a dialogue between nature and innovation, ethics, beauty, and durability. The range is produced using an innovative process, with each surface formed using 100% recycled aggregates sourced from quarry waste. The product has no added quartz and reduced crystalline silica content.
This places Madreterra squarely within the Ecotone™ family – a Quartzforms® scheme for sustainable surfaces that brings together technology and environmental awareness. Madreterra is the first surface made using the firm’s newly developed upcycling approach – a creative process that restores value and gives new life to granite aggregates. “With Madreterra, we’re continuing on the path of responsible innovation, giving form to an aesthetic that’s the product of respect,” said Marco Scapin, art director of Scapin Group. “It’s the result of extensive research that has allowed us to transform waste materials into a range of premium surfaces that combine functionality and sustainability. It’s a material that looks to the future but never forgets its origins.”
Cover photo: © Effezeta Group, courtesy of Marmomac
