Rusconi's Marble Masterpiece

A miniature cathedral hand-carved from 20,948 pieces of New South Wales marble

Housed in the Gundagai Visitor Information Centre on Sheridan Street, Rusconi's Marble Masterpiece is exactly what Atlas Obscura exists to document: a work of obsessive, patient, brilliant eccentricity that could only have come from one particular person in one particular place. The piece is a scale model of a Gothic cathedral — spires, buttresses, rose windows, and all — assembled entirely from 20,948 pieces of marble in 20 different varieties, every one of them quarried in New South Wales. Frank Rusconi, an Italian stonemason who settled in Gundagai, worked on it for 28 years, from 1910 to 1938.

The result stands about five feet high and is startlingly delicate. Up close, the individual pieces — some of them tiny, some of them veined with colour — resolve into something genuinely beautiful. It is the kind of object that photographs poorly and impresses enormously in person. Admission is free with the visitor centre.

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A story
Frank Rusconi began carving his masterpiece in 1910 and did not stop until 1938 — 28 years of cutting and polishing 20,948 individual pieces of marble, all sourced from New South Wales. Rusconi was an Italian-born stonemason who believed firmly that Australian marble was the equal of European stone, and the cathedral was his argument. He reportedly refused an offer from a museum that wanted to acquire it, insisting it should stay in Gundagai.