District of Casale and Santo Strato and Villa dei Misteri

Waypoint introductions and full write-ups

1. 1. District of Casale and Santo Strato

   Posillipo takes its name from a Greek phrase meaning a pause from pain, and the Romans, who knew a good view when they saw one, covered the ridge with villas. It is the green promontory that divides the Bay of Naples from the Gulf of Pozzuoli, a hill of soft yellow tuff thrown up by the volcanoes of the Phlegraean Fields, and its western slope falls into the sea in cliffs and small coves. The Casale and Santo Strato district sits on the sea side of the hill, where terraced gardens, old walls and tiny ports survived the building boom that swallowed so much of Naples.

   Read the complete District of Casale and Santo Strato write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   District of Casale and Santo Strato is where the day begins. Next is Villa dei Papiri.

2. 2. Villa dei Papiri

   The Villa of the Papyri is mostly still buried. It was a huge seaside villa at Herculaneum, on the slope below Vesuvius, and when the eruption of 79 AD sent a mud and ash flow down on the town, the villa was covered by twenty metres of hard volcanic rock. In the 1750s, the Bourbon engineers who were digging in the area tunnelled down and found marble statues, bronzes of rare quality and a library of around 1,800 papyrus scrolls, charred into black lumps by the heat. The scrolls, many of them works by the Epicurean philosopher Philodemus, have been read in recent years using X-ray imaging and artificial intelligence. The villa may have belonged to Julius Caesar's father-in-law, Piso, though this is a guess. The villa in Malibu that houses the Getty Museum is a copy of it.

   Read the complete Villa dei Papiri write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Villa dei Papiri comes up about 18 km into the recorded legs. Next is Villa dei Misteri.

3. 3. Villa dei Misteri

   Outside the walls of Pompeii, a few hundred metres from the Herculaneum Gate, stands a villa that holds one of the strangest paintings in the Roman world. The Villa of the Mysteries was a large country house and wine estate, and in one of its rooms a continuous frieze, nearly life-sized, runs around all four walls against a vivid red background, the famous Pompeian red. The figures include women, a young initiate, a satyr, a winged figure with a whip and the god Dionysus himself, and they seem to show a ritual of initiation into his cult, though nobody has ever been sure of the exact meaning. The paintings date from about the middle of the first century BC, some decades before the eruption.

   Read the complete Villa dei Misteri write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   about 35 km into the recorded legs you reach Villa dei Misteri. Next is back through Villa dei Papiri.

4. 4. back through Villa dei Papiri

   Return visit. Read the place description above.

   Read the complete Villa dei Papiri write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   back through Villa dei Papiri, late in the day. Next is District of Casale and Santo Strato.

5. 5. District of Casale and Santo Strato

   Return visit. Read the place description above.

   Read the complete District of Casale and Santo Strato write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Back at District of Casale and Santo Strato. That is the ride.