Ancient Capua and Costiera Amalfitana

Scenic road chapters

Waypoint introductions and full write-ups

1. 1. Ancient Capua

   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.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Ancient Capua is where the day begins. Next is Historic Centre of Naples.

2. 2. 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.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Historic Centre of Naples comes up about 37 km into the recorded legs. Next is Torre Annunziata: Villa A.

3. 3. Torre Annunziata: Villa A

   In the busy, scruffy town of Torre Annunziata, on the coast south of Naples, a high wall hides one of the most extraordinary Roman villas ever found. Villa A at Oplontis, often called the Villa of Poppaea because it is thought to have belonged to the family of Nero's second wife, was buried by the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 and rediscovered in the eighteenth century, with large-scale excavations in the twentieth. It is part of the UNESCO site that includes Pompeii and Herculaneum, but sees a fraction of their visitors, which is one of its great pleasures.

   Read the complete Torre Annunziata: Villa A write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   about 60 km into the recorded legs you reach Torre Annunziata: Villa A. Next is Costiera Amalfitana.

4. 4. 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.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Costiera Amalfitana, about halfway. Next is back through Torre Annunziata: Villa A.

5. 5. back through Torre Annunziata: Villa A

   Return visit. Read the place description above.

   Read the complete Torre Annunziata: Villa A write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   back through Torre Annunziata: Villa A sits at 115 km, about halfway. Next is back through Historic Centre of Naples.

6. 6. back through Historic Centre of Naples

   Return visit. Read the place description above.

   Read the complete Historic Centre of Naples write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   back through Historic Centre of Naples comes up about 165 km into the recorded legs. Next is Ancient Capua.

7. 7. Ancient Capua

   Return visit. Read the place description above.

   Read the complete Ancient Capua write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Ancient Capua closes the day.