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 412 km round trip from Florence - roughly 6 h 48 in the saddle. It goes by way of Historic Centre of Siena, Piazza del Duomo and back through Historic Centre of Siena. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
Expect company on a summer weekend. Early is better than fast. For about 80 km this is Chiantigiana Wine Road, a road with a name of its own and a reason for it.
Florence is the kind of city where the problem is not finding something to look at but deciding when to stop. The historic centre sits on a bend of the Arno, a compact grid of Roman origin with the Duomo at its middle, Brunelleschi's dome rising over the roofs, the Palazzo Vecchio at the civic heart and the Ponte Vecchio, the only bridge the retreating Germans spared in 1944. The Medici bankers who ran the place for much of the fifteenth to eighteenth centuries paid for most of what you are about to see, and they were rather good at it.
Read the complete Historic Centre of Florence write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Historic Centre of Florence is where the day begins. Next is Historic Centre of Siena.
Siena sits on three ridges in the heart of Tuscany, a red-brick medieval city that has hardly changed its shape in seven hundred years. At its centre is the Piazza del Campo, a sloping, shell-shaped square paved in brick and divided into nine sections, a reminder of the Council of Nine that governed the city in its golden age. The Palazzo Pubblico, with the slender Torre del Mangia, stands at the bottom of the square, and inside are frescoes by Ambrogio Lorenzetti showing the effects of good and bad government, painted in the fourteenth century.
Read the complete Historic Centre of Siena write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Historic Centre of Siena comes up about 80 km into the recorded legs. Next is Piazza del Duomo.
Nothing prepares you for that first glimpse through the gateway. A wide green lawn, and set on it like ornaments on a cloth, the white marble cathedral, the round baptistery, the cemetery cloister of the Camposanto, and of course the bell tower, leaning at an angle that looks wrong no matter how many photographs you have seen. The Piazza del Duomo in Pisa, also called the Field of Miracles, was one of the first places in Italy to be listed by UNESCO, back in 1987.
Read the complete Piazza del Duomo write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 206 km into the recorded legs you reach Piazza del Duomo. Next is back through Historic Centre of Siena.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Historic Centre of Siena write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Historic Centre of Siena, late in the day. Next is Historic Centre of Florence.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Historic Centre of Florence write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Historic Centre of Florence. That is the ride.
Historic Centre of Florence → Historic Centre of Siena is 80 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Historic Centre of Siena → Piazza del Duomo is 126 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Piazza del Duomo → back through Historic Centre of Siena is 128 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through Historic Centre of Siena → Historic Centre of Florence is 78 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.