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 Solferino it runs 358 km to Solferino; allow about 7 h 40 of riding. The stops in between: Mantua and Sabbioneta, Sabbioneta, Bassa collina reggiana and Evaporitic Karst and Caves of Northern Ape. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 900 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. The line favours views over speed.
Corte Carpani is the kind of place that the name tells you most about. A corte in this part of Lombardy is a farm courtyard, with a farmhouse, barns and outbuildings arranged around a square, and the old estates in the Mantuan hills often kept the names of the families who owned them for a few generations. It sits among the low moraine hills south of Lake Garda, near the villages of Solferino and Cavriana, in a country of vines, maize, cypress rows and brick farm towers.
Read the complete Bande - Corte Carpani write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Bande - Corte Carpani is where the day begins. Next is Mantua and Sabbioneta.
Approach Mantua from the north across the causeway and you see why it was so hard to conquer: the city rises from water on three sides, encircled by lakes formed from the river Mincio, its domes and towers reflected in the still surface. For nearly four centuries it belonged to the Gonzaga family, who turned a marshy town into one of the most brilliant courts of the Renaissance, and Mantua is listed by UNESCO together with Sabbioneta, the small ideal city that a branch of the same family built some thirty kilometres away.
Read the complete Mantua and Sabbioneta write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Mantua and Sabbioneta comes up about 35 km into the recorded legs. Next is Sabbioneta.
Sabbioneta is a Renaissance experiment: a whole town built from scratch in the second half of the sixteenth century by Vespasiano Gonzaga, a soldier, scholar and minor prince of the great Mantuan family, who wanted a capital laid out according to the ideals of the age. He got it. Inside its star-shaped walls the streets run in a regular grid, and in a few hundred metres you pass a ducal palace, a long gallery built to show off his collection of ancient sculpture, a summer palace, and one of the earliest purpose-built theatres in Europe, the Teatro all'Antica, designed by Vincenzo Scamozzi. Sabbioneta and Mantua were listed together by UNESCO in 2008 as two contrasting visions of the Renaissance city.
Read the complete Sabbioneta write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 71 km into the recorded legs you reach Sabbioneta. Next is Bassa collina reggiana.
The low hills south of Reggio Emilia, where the Po plain starts to ripple up toward the Apennines, hide a strange geology: outcrops of gypsum, the glittering crystalline rock left behind when ancient seas evaporated millions of years ago. Water dissolves gypsum easily, and over time it has carved caves, sinkholes and blind valleys into these hills. The Bassa Collina Reggiana, the low Reggio hill country, is part of the UNESCO site Evaporitic Karst and Caves of Northern Apennines, listed in 2023, and around Borzano, Albinea and Vezzano sul Crostolo you can see the white and grey gypsum cliffs poking through the woods and vineyards.
Read the complete Bassa collina reggiana write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Bassa collina reggiana, about halfway. Next is Evaporitic Karst and Caves of Northern Ape.
Gypsum dissolves in water far faster than limestone, and in the upper valley of the Secchia, in the Reggio Emilia Apennines, that simple fact has produced a strange landscape of white cliffs, sinkholes, caves and underground rivers. The Evaporitic Karst and Caves of the Northern Apennines were added to the World Heritage list in 2023, and this area near Castelnovo ne' Monti and Villa Minozzo holds some of the most striking outcrops, ancient Triassic gypsum that glitters in the sun and forms steep walls above the river. Near the Secchia, the springs of Poiano gush out of the rock with a strong flow of slightly salty water, fed by the karst system.
Read the complete Evaporitic Karst and Caves of Northern Ape write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Evaporitic Karst and Caves of Northern Ape sits at 181 km, about halfway. Next is back through Bassa collina reggiana.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Bassa collina reggiana write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Bassa collina reggiana comes up about 228 km into the recorded legs. Next is back through Sabbioneta.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Sabbioneta write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 287 km into the recorded legs you reach back through Sabbioneta. Next is back through Mantua and Sabbioneta.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Mantua and Sabbioneta write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Mantua and Sabbioneta, late in the day. Next is Bande - Corte Carpani.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Bande - Corte Carpani write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The route ends here after 358 km.
Bande - Corte Carpani → Mantua and Sabbioneta is 35 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Mantua and Sabbioneta → Sabbioneta is 36 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Sabbioneta → Bassa collina reggiana is 59 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Bassa collina reggiana → Evaporitic Karst and Caves of Northern Ape is 48 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Evaporitic Karst and Caves of Northern Ape → back through Bassa collina reggiana is 50 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Bassa collina reggiana → back through Sabbioneta is 59 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Sabbioneta → back through Mantua and Sabbioneta is 38 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Mantua and Sabbioneta → Bande - Corte Carpani is 34 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.