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.
324 km from Santa Maria Capua Vetere to Santa Maria Capua Vetere, about 5 h 08 of riding. The stops in between: The Via Appia on the route from Beneventum, The Appia Traiana from Aecae to Herdonia and back through The Via Appia on the route from Beneventum. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
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 The Via Appia on the route from Beneventum.
East of Benevento, the Via Appia leaves the Calore valley and heads into the green, rolling hills of Irpinia on its long way to Brindisi, and near Venticano and Pietradefusi you are travelling over one of its quieter stretches. The road the Romans laid here is mostly lost under fields and later tracks, but the line still guides the landscape, and a short way south-east lie the remains of Aeclanum, near Mirabella Eclano, a Roman town that grew rich on the traffic. Benevento itself was the great junction: from here the original Appia ran over the hills to Venusia and Tarentum, while the Emperor Trajan built a faster route, the Via Traiana, through the plains of Apulia. His triumphal arch, raised in AD 114, still stands in Benevento, its reliefs remarkably sharp.
Read the complete The Via Appia on the route from Beneventum write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The Via Appia on the route from Beneventum comes up about 89 km into the recorded legs. Next is The Appia Traiana from Aecae to Herdonia.
There is nothing here that announces itself. What you have is a long, almost featureless landscape of grain, stubble and the odd masseria, and under it the line of a Roman road. The Via Traiana was commissioned by the emperor Trajan around 109 AD as a faster, drier alternative to the old Appia between Benevento and Brindisi, and the stretch from Aecae to Herdonia is one of the places where you can follow its logic: flat, direct, and aimed at the next town.
Read the complete The Appia Traiana from Aecae to Herdonia write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 163 km into the recorded legs you reach The Appia Traiana from Aecae to Herdonia. Next is back through The Via Appia on the route from Beneventum.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete The Via Appia on the route from Beneventum write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through The Via Appia on the route from Beneventum, 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.
Back at Ancient Capua. That is the ride.
Ancient Capua → The Via Appia on the route from Beneventum is 89 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
The Via Appia on the route from Beneventum → The Appia Traiana from Aecae to Herdonia is 74 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
The Appia Traiana from Aecae to Herdonia → back through The Via Appia on the route from Beneventum is 74 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through The Via Appia on the route from Beneventum → Ancient Capua is 87 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.