Why this ride
From Padova it runs 262 km to Padova; allow about 3 h 18 of riding. The stops in between: Villa Badoer, MamBo and back through Villa Badoer. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
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 Padova it runs 262 km to Padova; allow about 3 h 18 of riding. The stops in between: Villa Badoer, MamBo and back through Villa Badoer. 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 77 km this is Mille Miglia Historic Route Core, a road with a name of its own and a reason for it.
Padua, in the Veneto, has one of the great pilgrimage churches of Europe, and it is the grave of a Portuguese friar. Anthony of Padua was born in Lisbon, joined the Franciscans and became a famous preacher, and he died near Padua in 1231 at the age of thirty-six. He was made a saint within a year, one of the fastest canonisations in history, and construction of the great basilica began soon after. The Basilica of Saint Anthony, which the people of Padua simply call il Santo, is a church of many domes, partly Romanesque and partly Gothic with a hint of Byzantine, and it holds the saint's tomb in a side chapel, where pilgrims press their hands against the marble.
Read the complete Basilica and Monastery of St. Anthony Orat write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Basilica and Monastery of St. Anthony Orat is where the day begins. Next is Villa Badoer.
Fratta Polesine is a quiet village in the Polesine, the flat, fertile land between the Adige and the Po in the south of the Veneto, and its pride is a villa by Andrea Palladio. Villa Badoer, built in the 1550s for Francesco Badoer, a Venetian nobleman, stands on a raised platform above the surrounding fields, with a temple-front portico, curved colonnades sweeping out on either side to farm buildings, and a grand staircase. It was the first of Palladio's villas to use the curved barchesse, and it is part of the UNESCO-listed City of Vicenza and the Palladian Villas of the Veneto. Inside, the walls carry frescoes, and the villa houses a museum about the Polesine and its history.
Read the complete Villa Badoer write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Villa Badoer comes up about 54 km into the recorded legs. Next is MamBo.
Not every checkpoint on a ride needs to be old. MamBo, the Museo d'Arte Moderna di Bologna, opened in 2007 in a former municipal bakery on the northern edge of the old centre, and the building says a lot about how Bologna thinks. The city turned the factory where it once baked bread for its people into a home for twentieth-century and contemporary art, with a strong collection of Giorgio Morandi, the painter who spent his whole life in this town painting bottles and jugs on a table, and whose little house lies not far away.
Read the complete MamBo write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 131 km into the recorded legs you reach MamBo. Next is back through Villa Badoer.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Villa Badoer write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Villa Badoer, late in the day. Next is Basilica and Monastery of St. Anthony Orat, 73 km on.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Basilica and Monastery of St. Anthony Orat write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Basilica and Monastery of St. Anthony Orat. That is the ride.
Basilica and Monastery of St. Anthony Orat → Villa Badoer is 54 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Villa Badoer → MamBo is 77 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
MamBo → back through Villa Badoer is 75 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through Villa Badoer → Basilica and Monastery of St. Anthony Orat is 56 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.