CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
Ordered leg totals agree within rounding. Stop distances are approximate sums of rounded legs. Stops, delays, approach and any separate return travel add time. Basis: producer-declared routed record.
Reading history stays on this device. My road watch requires a separate selection; opening it does not subscribe this ride.
Distance and riding time are measured on the routed road. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
From Santa Maria Capua Vetere it runs 505 km to Santa Maria Capua Vetere; allow about 9 h 19 of riding. On the way it passes Historic Centre of Naples, Costiera Amalfitana, Punta Licosa and the Mount Stella region and Cilento and Vallo di Diano National Park w. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
Expect company on a summer weekend. Early is better than fast. For about 62 km this is Amalfi Coast Road, a road with a name of its own and a reason for it.
Santa Maria Capua Vetere does not look like much as you ride in, a busy Campanian town of tangled traffic and apartment blocks, but under and around it lies ancient Capua, once one of the richest cities in Italy. The Via Appia passed straight through, and its great amphitheatre, second in size only to the Colosseum, still dominates the edge of town. This was where the gladiator schools trained their fighters, and it was from a school in Capua that Spartacus broke out in 73 BC with a band of fellow slaves, beginning the revolt that shook Rome for two years. The amphitheatre and a small gladiator museum nearby are the obvious stops, and the Mithraeum under the town, with its painted scene of the god slaying a bull, is one of the best preserved in Italy.
Read the complete Ancient Capua write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Ancient Capua is where the day begins. Next is Historic Centre of Naples.
Naples is not a city you ride through so much as one you survive and then fall in love with. The historic centre, a UNESCO site since 1995, sits on the street plan of Neapolis, the Greek new city founded around the sixth century BC, and the three ancient decumani still run straight through it, the most famous being Spaccanapoli, the street that splits Naples in two. Along them, churches, palaces, shrines, workshops and laundry-hung alleys are packed together with an intensity found nowhere else in Europe.
Read the complete Historic Centre of Naples write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Historic Centre of Naples comes up about 37 km into the recorded legs. Next is Costiera Amalfitana.
The Amalfi coast road is the reason many riders first dreamed of Italy, and it lives up to the legend and then some, with a few catches. The SS163 Amalfitana, carved into the cliffs above the sea in the nineteenth century, winds along the southern side of the Sorrento peninsula from Positano to Vietri sul Mare, with hundreds of bends, sheer drops, tunnels, bridges and villages clinging to the rocks. Amalfi itself, a small town of about five thousand people at the mouth of a ravine, was once a powerful maritime republic that rivalled Venice and Genoa in the Middle Ages, and its cathedral, with its striped facade and Arab-Norman cloister, is a reminder of that glory.
Read the complete Costiera Amalfitana write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 99 km into the recorded legs you reach Costiera Amalfitana. Next is Punta Licosa and the Mount Stella region.
According to legend, the siren Leucosia threw herself into the sea here after failing to lure Odysseus to his doom, and her body became the little island off Punta Licosa. It is a fine story for a fine place. Punta Licosa is a low, wild headland on the coast of the Cilento, south of Salerno, covered in Mediterranean scrub, pines and holm oaks, with rocky coves and clear water, and it forms part of the Cilento and Vallo di Diano National Park, listed by UNESCO in 1998 as a cultural landscape. Behind it rises Monte Stella, the mountain that gives its name to the surrounding hills, dotted with small villages and terraced olive groves.
Read the complete Punta Licosa and the Mount Stella region write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Punta Licosa and the Mount Stella region, about halfway. Next is Cilento and Vallo di Diano National Park w.
South of Salerno, past the temples of Paestum, the coast bends out into a great knuckle of mountains, and inland from the beaches the Cilento national park climbs into wooded massifs that most visitors never see. The park, together with Paestum, ancient Velia and the Certosa di Padula, is a World Heritage Site, recognised as a cultural landscape shaped by Greek colonists, Lucanian tribes and long monastic tradition.
Read the complete Cilento and Vallo di Diano National Park w write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Cilento and Vallo di Diano National Park w sits at 194 km, about halfway. Next is back through Punta Licosa and the Mount Stella region.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Punta Licosa and the Mount Stella region write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Punta Licosa and the Mount Stella region comes up about 310 km into the recorded legs. Next is back through Costiera Amalfitana.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Costiera Amalfitana write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 407 km into the recorded legs you reach back through Costiera Amalfitana. Next is back through Historic Centre of Naples.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Historic Centre of Naples write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Historic Centre of Naples, late in the day. Next is Ancient Capua.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Ancient Capua write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The route ends here after 505 km.
Ancient Capua → Historic Centre of Naples is 37 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Historic Centre of Naples → Costiera Amalfitana is 62 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Costiera Amalfitana → Punta Licosa and the Mount Stella region is 96 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Punta Licosa and the Mount Stella region → Cilento and Vallo di Diano National Park w is 57 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Cilento and Vallo di Diano National Park w → back through Punta Licosa and the Mount Stella region is 58 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Punta Licosa and the Mount Stella region → back through Costiera Amalfitana is 97 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through Costiera Amalfitana → back through Historic Centre of Naples is 62 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Historic Centre of Naples → Ancient Capua is 36 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.