As early as Romans had a desire to construct a new temple, they used to travel to a local quarries of Tivoli and hewn blocks of porous rock called lapis tiburtinus (modern day travertine), as well as, and bring the raw material to town on rafts floating down the river.

This is the way they created the Colosseum 2,000 years ago. That was what they did with the Basilica of St. Peter and the great colonnade of Bernini, several hundred years later.

The same quarries from which they were created, with their characteristic pockmarked travertine, are now being excavated to cut a new generation of churches, temples and mosques throughout the world – not to mention banks, museums, government buildings and domestic houses.

Roman travertine is rare; whereas there are also underground quarries of the sedimentary limestone in other nations. Romantic travertine, which is predominantly composed of calcium carbonate minerals, was deposited and formed by calcium, sulfur and other minerals hundreds of thousands of years ago and reveals the history of the volcanic eruptions, forests, and fossils of the region in its striated layers.

Some architects admire it because of several reasons: It is durable, abundant and can resist any assaults of climatic and environmental conditions. It can take many different appearances, depending on its shape and place of incision: a shaggy or smooth one, an ugly, warm white, with disordered black holes, or a sandy or beige with grey or brown or even greenish streaks.