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.
A 446 km round trip from Brembate - roughly 7 h 17 in the saddle. On the way it passes Church and Dominican Convent of Santa Mari, The castrum with the Torba Tower and the c, Sacro Monte della SS.Trinità and Sacro Monte Calvario. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 1,850 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. The line favours views over speed.
Crespi d'Adda is a whole company town, built from 1878 by the Crespi family of cotton manufacturers on a bend of the Adda river where the water could turn their turbines. Around the mill they laid out rows of neat houses with gardens for the workers, larger villas for the managers, a school, a church that copies the Renaissance church of Santa Maria di Piazza in Busto Arsizio, a washhouse, a hospital, and, on a slight rise at the end of the main street, a cemetery with a strange, almost Mayan-looking mausoleum for the family. It was a paternalistic utopia in which the company looked after its workers from cradle to grave, and UNESCO listed it in 1995 as one of the best-preserved examples of its kind in Europe.
Read the complete Crespi d'Adda write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Crespi d'Adda is where the day begins. Next is Church and Dominican Convent of Santa Mari.
Most people who come to Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan are here for one painting, and they are right to be. On the wall of the old refectory of the Dominican convent, Leonardo da Vinci painted the Last Supper in the 1490s for Duke Ludovico Sforza, and despite his experimental technique, which began to fail almost at once, despite centuries of damage and despite a bomb that destroyed much of the building in 1943, the painting survives. The wall was protected with sandbags, and the long restoration completed in 1999 revealed colours and faces that had been hidden for centuries.
Read the complete Church and Dominican Convent of Santa Mari write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Church and Dominican Convent of Santa Mari comes up about 46 km into the recorded legs. Next is The castrum with the Torba Tower and the c.
The Lombards get a bad press in most history books, which tend to treat them as the barbarians who arrived in Italy in 568 and broke what was left of Roman order. Castelseprio tells a subtler story. On a wooded spur above the Olona valley, north-west of Milan, stand the ruins of a late Roman and Lombard castrum, a fortified town that controlled the road between the plain and the Alpine lakes, and just outside its walls is the little church of Santa Maria foris portas, whose frescoes are among the most mysterious and beautiful paintings of early medieval Europe. Down by the river, the stout stone Torba tower, later part of a Benedictine nunnery, completes the group. Together they form one of the sites in the UNESCO listing of the Lombards in Italy.
Read the complete The castrum with the Torba Tower and the c write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 93 km into the recorded legs you reach The castrum with the Torba Tower and the c. Next is Sacro Monte della SS.Trinità, 45 km on.
High above the western shore of Lake Maggiore, in a forest of chestnut and beech above the village of Ghiffa, a small sanctuary dedicated to the Holy Trinity looks out over the water to the hills of Lombardy. The Sacro Monte of Ghiffa began in the seventeenth century as a series of chapels along a path, each meant to illustrate a scene from sacred history for pilgrims, but it was never completed as planned. It is the smallest of the nine Sacri Monti of Piedmont and Lombardy listed by UNESCO in 2003, and its charm lies in its intimacy and its setting: a few chapels, a porticoed walkway and a church in the woods, with the lake shining below.
Read the complete Sacro Monte della SS.Trinità write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Sacro Monte della SS.Trinità, about halfway. Next is Sacro Monte Calvario.
Domodossola's holy mountain rises immediately above the town, on the wooded Mattarella hill, and the walk or ride up gives you the whole Ossola valley at your feet. The Sacro Monte Calvario was begun in the seventeenth century as a devotional path of chapels depicting the Passion of Christ, each holding painted and sculpted scenes, leading up to a sanctuary church at the top. It is one of the nine Sacri Monti of Piedmont and Lombardy inscribed together on the UNESCO list, and it has a particular link with Antonio Rosmini, the philosopher-priest who founded his religious institute here in the nineteenth century.
Read the complete Sacro Monte Calvario write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Sacro Monte Calvario sits at 178 km, about halfway. Next is back through Sacro Monte della SS.Trinità, 45 km on.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Sacro Monte della SS.Trinità write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Sacro Monte della SS.Trinità comes up about 274 km into the recorded legs. Next is back through The castrum with the Torba Tower and the c.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete The castrum with the Torba Tower and the c write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 356 km into the recorded legs you reach back through The castrum with the Torba Tower and the c. Next is back through Church and Dominican Convent of Santa Mari.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Church and Dominican Convent of Santa Mari write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Church and Dominican Convent of Santa Mari, late in the day. Next is Crespi d'Adda.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Crespi d'Adda write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The route ends here after 446 km.
Crespi d'Adda → Church and Dominican Convent of Santa Mari is 46 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Church and Dominican Convent of Santa Mari → The castrum with the Torba Tower and the c is 47 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
The castrum with the Torba Tower and the c → Sacro Monte della SS.Trinità is 81 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Sacro Monte della SS.Trinità → Sacro Monte Calvario is 50 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Sacro Monte Calvario → back through Sacro Monte della SS.Trinità is 50 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Sacro Monte della SS.Trinità → back through The castrum with the Torba Tower and the c is 82 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through The castrum with the Torba Tower and the c → back through Church and Dominican Convent of Santa Mari is 46 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Church and Dominican Convent of Santa Mari → Crespi d'Adda is 44 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.