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.
436 km from Racconigi to Racconigi, about 8 h 22 of riding. On the way it passes Palazzina di Caccia di Stupinigi, Sacro Monte di Belmonte, VI.1-Emissario and Sacro Monte o “Nuova Gerusalemme” di Varal. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 1,600 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
Racconigi is a small town on the plain south of Turin, in Piedmont, surrounded by fields of maize and rice and lines of poplars. It is dominated by its castle, a grand residence of the House of Savoy, which ruled Piedmont and later Italy. Originally a medieval fortress, it was transformed over the centuries into a palace, with Baroque and neoclassical façades, and surrounded by a vast park with lakes, woods and a farm. The castle is part of the UNESCO-listed Residences of the Royal House of Savoy, inscribed in 1997.
Read the complete Castello di Racconigi write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Castello di Racconigi is where the day begins. Next is Palazzina di Caccia di Stupinigi.
On the southern edge of Turin, at the end of a long straight avenue lined with trees, a bronze stag stands on the dome of a palace that looks like a star dropped on the plain. The Palazzina di Caccia di Stupinigi was built from 1729 by the architect Filippo Juvarra for King Vittorio Amedeo II of Savoy as a hunting lodge, though the word lodge hardly does justice to its grand halls, frescoed ceilings and sprawling wings. It is part of the World Heritage Site of the Residences of the Royal House of Savoy, inscribed in 1997.
Read the complete Palazzina di Caccia di Stupinigi write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Palazzina di Caccia di Stupinigi comes up about 32 km into the recorded legs. Next is Sacro Monte di Belmonte.
On a granite hill rising above the Canavese plain north of Turin, the Sacro Monte di Belmonte looks out over the foothills toward the Alps. The sanctuary, run by Franciscan friars, has a church and a circuit of chapels representing the stations of the Passion, built in the early eighteenth century on a site that had long been a place of pilgrimage. It is part of the UNESCO-listed Sacri Monti of Piedmont and Lombardy, and the walk around the chapels, under chestnut and oak trees, is calm and shady even in summer.
Read the complete Sacro Monte di Belmonte write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 97 km into the recorded legs you reach Sacro Monte di Belmonte. Next is VI.1-Emissario, 49 km on.
Lago di Viverone is a small, warm lake in northern Piedmont, cupped inside one of the most remarkable glacial landforms in Europe. Ice flowing out of the Aosta Valley during the last glaciations dumped a vast ring of moraine here, the Morainic Amphitheatre of Ivrea, and its eastern wall, the Serra, runs for many kilometres as an almost perfectly straight wooded ridge. The lake sits at the foot of it, with the villages of Viverone and Azeglio on its shores and Ivrea around a quarter of an hour's ride to the northwest.
Read the complete VI.1-Emissario write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
VI.1-Emissario, about halfway. Next is Sacro Monte o “Nuova Gerusalemme” di Varal.
Varallo is a small town at the point where the Valsesia stops being a wide valley and starts becoming a mountain one, and above it, on a rocky spur reached by a winding road or a short cable car, is the oldest and most ambitious of the Sacri Monti. In 1491 a Franciscan friar called Bernardino Caimi, back from the Holy Land, set out to recreate Jerusalem here for pilgrims who could never make the journey. The result is a hilltop village of more than forty chapels filled with life-size painted terracotta and wooden figures, hundreds of them, telling the life of Christ like a frozen theatre. Gaudenzio Ferrari, the great Renaissance painter of this valley, worked on many of them.
Read the complete Sacro Monte o “Nuova Gerusalemme” di Varal write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Sacro Monte o “Nuova Gerusalemme” di Varal sits at 198 km, about halfway. Next is back through VI.1-Emissario, 49 km on.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete VI.1-Emissario write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through VI.1-Emissario comes up about 293 km into the recorded legs. Next is back through Sacro Monte di Belmonte.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Sacro Monte di Belmonte write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 339 km into the recorded legs you reach back through Sacro Monte di Belmonte. Next is back through Palazzina di Caccia di Stupinigi.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Palazzina di Caccia di Stupinigi write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Palazzina di Caccia di Stupinigi, late in the day. Next is Castello di Racconigi.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Castello di Racconigi write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The route ends here after 436 km.
Castello di Racconigi → Palazzina di Caccia di Stupinigi is 32 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Palazzina di Caccia di Stupinigi → Sacro Monte di Belmonte is 65 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Sacro Monte di Belmonte → VI.1-Emissario is 46 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
VI.1-Emissario → Sacro Monte o “Nuova Gerusalemme” di Varal is 75 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Sacro Monte o “Nuova Gerusalemme” di Varal → back through VI.1-Emissario is 75 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through VI.1-Emissario → back through Sacro Monte di Belmonte is 46 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Sacro Monte di Belmonte → back through Palazzina di Caccia di Stupinigi is 59 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Palazzina di Caccia di Stupinigi → Castello di Racconigi is 38 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.