Ferrara and Bassa collina reggiana

Waypoint introductions and full write-ups

1. 1. Ferrara

   Ferrara is a city built for walking and cycling, with flat streets, a ring of Renaissance walls nine kilometres long, and so many bicycles that it is called the city of bicycles. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, under the Este family, it was one of the great courts of Renaissance Italy, and the Estense castle, with its moat and drawbridges, still dominates the centre. The city's Renaissance planning, especially the Herculean Addition, a new quarter laid out in the late fifteenth century, led historians to call it the first modern city in Europe, and UNESCO has inscribed Ferrara and the Po Delta as a World Heritage Site.

   Read the complete Ferrara write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

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

   Planning note

   Ferrara is where the day begins. Next is Certosa.

2. 2. Certosa

   Bologna has a way of making even its dead look sociable. The Certosa, the monumental cemetery just north-west of the old walls, began life as a Carthusian monastery and was turned into a public burial ground at the start of the nineteenth century, when Napoleonic rules said the dead should lie outside the city. The monks' cloisters and chapels were simply adapted, and over the next two centuries families commissioned sculpture on a scale that makes the place feel like an open-air museum. Marble weeping women, family portraits in stone, scenes from daily life, and a lot of whiskered gentlemen in frock coats line long arcades.

   Read the complete Certosa write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

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

   Planning note

   Certosa comes up about 51 km into the recorded legs. Next is Bassa collina reggiana.

3. 3. Bassa collina reggiana

   The low hills south of Reggio Emilia, where the Po plain starts to ripple up toward the Apennines, hide a strange geology: outcrops of gypsum, the glittering crystalline rock left behind when ancient seas evaporated millions of years ago. Water dissolves gypsum easily, and over time it has carved caves, sinkholes and blind valleys into these hills. The Bassa Collina Reggiana, the low Reggio hill country, is part of the UNESCO site Evaporitic Karst and Caves of Northern Apennines, listed in 2023, and around Borzano, Albinea and Vezzano sul Crostolo you can see the white and grey gypsum cliffs poking through the woods and vineyards.

   Read the complete Bassa collina reggiana write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

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

   Planning note

   about 133 km into the recorded legs you reach Bassa collina reggiana. Next is back through Certosa.

4. 4. back through Certosa

   Return visit. Read the place description above.

   Read the complete Certosa write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

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

   Planning note

   back through Certosa, late in the day. Next is Ferrara.

5. 5. Ferrara

   Return visit. Read the place description above.

   Read the complete Ferrara write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

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

   Planning note

   Back at Ferrara. That is the ride.