Soft stones like "S. Gottardo" and "San Germano" are quarried in the mining area of the Colli Berici near Vicenza. These fairly well-known stones have been used by innumerable artists and architects throughout the centuries. The most famous of all was Palladio (XVI century), who used it extensively in building his monumental palaces and Veneto Villas.

The Colli Berici hills are composed of Secondary and Tertiary formations. The former is meagerly represented by more recent layers from the cretaceous period, while the latter, especially the Eocene and Oligocene formations, are a great deal more extensive.

The Pietra di San Gottardo is a whitish limestone tending to straw- yellow due to minimal traces of clay, attributable to the Oligocene Era. This is a pure biospartic limestone, rich in micro- and macro-foraminifers with algae, bryozoan, and echinoid remains distributed in a uniform manner. Its grain is heterogeneous and consists of a fairly fine carbonate matrix incorporating more or less plentiful and coarse fossil remains. When the rock is newly quarried it is slightly water-logged, making it softer and easier to work and thus suitable for sculpturing purposes. With time the stone loses its water, hardening and becoming more resistant to decay.

The Pietra Dorata (or yellow stone) is a biomicrite rich in foraminifers and is heterogeneous in its structure and composition. It has a pelitic component in its insoluble residue consisting primarily of montmorillonoids and K-feldspar, from which it takes its yellow pigment.