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The Pedreres de s’Hostal quarry, in Menorca, is a marvel in the extraction of marés stone for construction and stands out for its labyrinth, as we see in this photographic report in La Vanguardia’s Readers’ Photos.
Sandstone is a sandstone (detrital sedimentary rock) composed of calcareous grains held together by a natural carbonate cement. It is formed by lithification of the dunes.
It was widely used in the construction of buildings and walls of estates, such as the Cathedral of Mallorca and the Almudaina Palace, as well as the vast majority of railway stations of the Mallorca Railway Company.
Las Pedreres de s’Hostal are located 1 km from the town of Ciutadella de Menorca and make up an area of ??marés quarries, whose exploitation was completed in 1994.
A year later, the Lithic Association, headed by the sculptor Laetitia Sauleau, rented the quarries to rescue them and give them a new life, revealing their essence of a labyrinth and garden.
The idea of ??a sculpted landscape stands out, with vertical walls of fascinating shapes, as we can see in the photographs. The 7 ha quarry site shows an ancient area of ??manual extraction (19th-20th centuries), and a modern area (1960-1994) of mechanical extraction.
Las Pedreres de s’Hostal, in 2017, were declared an Asset of Ethnological Interest, forming part of the catalog of the Historical Heritage of Menorca, and the Líthica project received recognition from Hispania Nostra as a “reference in heritage rehabilitation and intervention in the landscape “.
