Fortified city of Peschiera del Garda and Villa Almerico Capra

Scenic road chapters

Waypoint introductions and full write-ups

1. 1. Fortified city of Peschiera del Garda

   Water surrounds Peschiera on every side, and that was the whole idea. The town sits where the River Mincio flows out of the southern end of Lake Garda, and in the sixteenth century the Republic of Venice turned it into a star-shaped fortress with massive pentagonal walls, bastions and moats fed by the lake and the river. Later the Austrians made it one of the four corners of the Quadrilatero, the defensive square of fortresses that guarded their hold on northern Italy in the nineteenth century. In 2017 Peschiera became part of the UNESCO listing of Venetian works of defence between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, alongside Bergamo, Palmanova and fortresses on the Adriatic.

   Read the complete Fortified city of Peschiera del Garda write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

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

   Planning note

   Fortified city of Peschiera del Garda is where the day begins. Next is Villa Serego.

2. 2. Villa Serego

   Andrea Palladio built many villas around the Veneto, but the one at Santa Sofia di Pedemonte, in the Valpolicella just north-west of Verona, is the oddball of the family. Commissioned by Marcantonio Serego in the mid-sixteenth century and never finished, it has none of the smooth classical calm of the Rotonda. Instead its courtyard is lined with giant Ionic columns built up from rough, rusticated blocks of local stone, as if the building were half turning back into the hillside. Only part of the planned design was completed, and the effect is wonderfully strange.

   Read the complete Villa Serego write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

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

   Planning note

   Villa Serego comes up about 29 km into the recorded legs. Next is Villa Pisani Ferri.

3. 3. Villa Pisani Ferri

   Andrea Palladio was still a young architect, not long out of his training as a stonemason, when the Pisani brothers, members of a powerful Venetian family, asked him to design a country house at Bagnolo, near Lonigo, in the late 1530s or early 1540s. The result, now known as Villa Pisani Ferri, is one of his early villas, a solid, symmetrical house with a grand central hall and a facade facing the river, part of the UNESCO site of the City of Vicenza and the Palladian Villas of the Veneto. Visits depend on the owners' arrangements, so check ahead if you hope to go inside.

   Read the complete Villa Pisani Ferri write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

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

   Planning note

   about 86 km into the recorded legs you reach Villa Pisani Ferri. Next is Villa Almerico Capra.

4. 4. Villa Almerico Capra

   The Villa Almerico Capra, known as La Rotonda, stands on a small hill above Vicenza, and it is one of the most copied buildings in the history of architecture. Andrea Palladio began it in the 1560s for a retired papal official, Paolo Almerico, who wanted a place for entertaining and for looking at the view rather than for farming. The plan is a perfect square, with a round hall under a dome at the centre, and each of the four sides has an identical portico with Ionic columns and a flight of steps, so that the house presents the same face to every direction. The idea was that the building should be an ornament to the landscape, and the landscape an ornament to the house.

   Read the complete Villa Almerico Capra write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

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

   Planning note

   Villa Almerico Capra, about halfway. Next is back through Villa Pisani Ferri.

5. 5. back through Villa Pisani Ferri

   Return visit. Read the place description above.

   Read the complete Villa Pisani Ferri write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

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

   Planning note

   back through Villa Pisani Ferri sits at 147 km, about halfway. Next is back through Villa Serego.

6. 6. back through Villa Serego

   Return visit. Read the place description above.

   Read the complete Villa Serego write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

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

   Planning note

   back through Villa Serego comes up about 207 km into the recorded legs. Next is Fortified city of Peschiera del Garda.

7. 7. Fortified city of Peschiera del Garda

   Return visit. Read the place description above.

   Read the complete Fortified city of Peschiera del Garda write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

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

   Planning note

   Fortified city of Peschiera del Garda closes the day.