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 Peschiera del Garda it runs 240 km to Peschiera del Garda; allow about 4 h 17 of riding. It goes by way of Villa Serego, Villa Pisani Ferri, Villa Almerico Capra and back through Villa Pisani Ferri. 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 57 km this is Mille Miglia Historic Route Core, a road with a name of its own and a reason for it.
South of Lake Garda the mountains step back and the land turns into a theatre of hills. Those are the moraines, left by the glacier that once filled the valley and dropped its load of gravel in a series of curved ridges as it melted. The belvedere on this stretch is part of that gentle amphitheatre, a viewpoint over vineyards and fields on the way between Peschiera del Garda and the old battlefields at San Martino and Solferino, and in clear weather you can see the Alps rising behind the lake.
Read the complete Belvedere write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Belvedere is where the day begins. Next is Villa Serego.
Andrea Palladio built many villas around the Veneto, but the one at Santa Sofia di Pedemonte, in the Valpolicella just north-west of Verona, is the oddball of the family. Commissioned by Marcantonio Serego in the mid-sixteenth century and never finished, it has none of the smooth classical calm of the Rotonda. Instead its courtyard is lined with giant Ionic columns built up from rough, rusticated blocks of local stone, as if the building were half turning back into the hillside. Only part of the planned design was completed, and the effect is wonderfully strange.
Read the complete Villa Serego write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Villa Serego comes up about 32 km into the recorded legs. Next is Villa Pisani Ferri.
Andrea Palladio was still a young architect, not long out of his training as a stonemason, when the Pisani brothers, members of a powerful Venetian family, asked him to design a country house at Bagnolo, near Lonigo, in the late 1530s or early 1540s. The result, now known as Villa Pisani Ferri, is one of his early villas, a solid, symmetrical house with a grand central hall and a facade facing the river, part of the UNESCO site of the City of Vicenza and the Palladian Villas of the Veneto. Visits depend on the owners' arrangements, so check ahead if you hope to go inside.
Read the complete Villa Pisani Ferri write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 89 km into the recorded legs you reach Villa Pisani Ferri. Next is Villa Almerico Capra.
The Villa Almerico Capra, known as La Rotonda, stands on a small hill above Vicenza, and it is one of the most copied buildings in the history of architecture. Andrea Palladio began it in the 1560s for a retired papal official, Paolo Almerico, who wanted a place for entertaining and for looking at the view rather than for farming. The plan is a perfect square, with a round hall under a dome at the centre, and each of the four sides has an identical portico with Ionic columns and a flight of steps, so that the house presents the same face to every direction. The idea was that the building should be an ornament to the landscape, and the landscape an ornament to the house.
Read the complete Villa Almerico Capra write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Villa Almerico Capra, about halfway. Next is back through Villa Pisani Ferri.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Villa Pisani Ferri write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Villa Pisani Ferri sits at 151 km, about halfway. Next is back through Villa Serego.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Villa Serego write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Villa Serego comes up about 210 km into the recorded legs. Next is Belvedere.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Belvedere write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Belvedere closes the day.
Belvedere → Villa Serego is 32 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Villa Serego → Villa Pisani Ferri is 57 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Villa Pisani Ferri → Villa Almerico Capra is 35 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Villa Almerico Capra → back through Villa Pisani Ferri is 35 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Villa Pisani Ferri → back through Villa Serego is 51 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Villa Serego → Belvedere is 30 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.