Abstract The northernmost coastal sector of the Italian peninsula from the La Spezia Gulf to Monte Pisano, including the Alpi Apuane mountain range, represents a special morpho-structural domain of the inner northwestern Apennines. Described by naturalists since the Roman age, its location on the land and sea track of the Italian Grand Tour makes it a special zone in the Italian peninsula that was visited by some of the most eminent European geologists of the nineteenth century, including Brongniart, Buckland, De la Beche, Hoffman, Escher von der Linth, Murchison and Lyell. The area has been also the homeland of naturalists and scientists who played a significant role during the nineteenth century in the advancement of geological studies in Italy. Thanks to Capellini's ‘Geological map of the La Spezia Gulf and surroundings’ (1863) and Zaccagna's ‘Geological maps of the Alpi Apuane’ (1879–97), the area became central in the history of the foundations of modern Italian geological maps. However, the opportunities provided by early mapping and palaeontological discoveries for developing tectonic concepts were squandered by Italian Apennines geologists, who remained stuck on explanations of autochthonism, thus missing an early recognition of nappe tectonics that was only accepted in the middle of the twentieth century.

Abstract This guide provides background information and an itinerary for a one-day field trip leaving Barga Garfagnana (Lucca) and crossing the Alpi Apuane toward Versilia. This field-trip route provides the opportunity to examine structures and strain features that record the underplating and exhumation of the Apuane metamorphic units. Special emphasis will given to the structures produced at the different scales in the Carrara marble, known throughout the world as a highly desirable building stone. The field trip will touch on the role of fluids, fluid-rock interaction, and deformation during underplating and subsequent exhumation of the region along major normal faults.

Abstract The aim of this paper is to describe some aspects of the Northern Apennine/Corsica orogenic system, a classical and still-debated subject in the geology of the central Mediterranean. After a necessarily short historical outline, a general updated overview of the Northern Apennine and Corsica is presented. The results of recent research on metamorphic units representative of the former continental margins have been used to constrain some key events of the geological history of the Northern Apennine/Corsica orogenic system and its relationship with the western Alps. Many still-controversial topics are tackled in this paper, which calls for further data and studies. In particular, the early stages of the oceanic convergence recorded by the Ligurian units of the Apennine and by Corsican ophiolites need refinement of structural and chronological data sets. Similarly, the deep structure of the inner Northern Apennine is far from being well explored; nevertheless, three crustal-scale cross-sections across the Northern Apennine are presented to show differences in the crustal and near-surface architecture at the orogen scale and to discuss some points of the Apennine history, namely the relationships between shortening in the external and exhumation/extension in the internal domains, from the Oligocene onward.