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 133 km round trip from Bergamo - roughly 2 h 09 in the saddle. The stops in between: Crespi d'Adda, Church and Dominican Convent of Santa Mari and back through Crespi d'Adda. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 900 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
Bergamo has two cities stacked on one hill. The Città Alta, the upper town, sits inside a ring of sixteenth-century walls built by the Republic of Venice, which ruled here for more than three centuries and wanted a stronghold against Milan. The walls run for about six kilometres and are pierced by gates, and UNESCO recognised them in 2017 as part of the Venetian Works of Defence between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Below lies the Città Bassa, the modern town of broad avenues and shopping streets, and a funicular links the two, a short, steep ride worth taking for its own sake.
Read the complete Fortified city of Bergamo write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Fortified city of Bergamo is where the day begins. Next is Crespi d'Adda.
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 comes up about 21 km into the recorded legs. 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.
about 67 km into the recorded legs you reach Church and Dominican Convent of Santa Mari. Next is back through 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.
back through Crespi d'Adda, late in the day. Next is Fortified city of Bergamo.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Fortified city of Bergamo write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Fortified city of Bergamo. That is the ride.
Fortified city of Bergamo → Crespi d'Adda is 21 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
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 → back through Crespi d'Adda is 44 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Crespi d'Adda → Fortified city of Bergamo is 22 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.