Photos

I know this is a bit of a strange photo, but the colors of this stone were just awesome, and evidently there's not much left, at least from this quarry. We stopped at a jewelry factory in Connemara, where one family had been quarrying the green Connemara marble for generations. Their quarry at Lissoughter in the Connemara mountains first opened in the 19th century. The marble became so famous that in 1903, even King Edward VII visited it during a royal tour. Today, the green stone is found in the world's greatest monuments, including at the Trinity College in Dublin, at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, in Kensington Palace and also various buildings in the US. It used to be used for all sorts of things, from floors to fireplaces, but now because it's getting rather scarce it's mostly just used for jewelry.