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.
243 km from Caldine to Caldine, about 4 h 02 of riding. It goes by way of Villa de Poggio a Caiano, Montecatini Terme, Piazza del Duomo and back through Montecatini Terme. 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 30 km this is Chiantigiana Wine Road, a road with a name of its own and a reason for it.
Pratolino is a hill north of Florence where, in the 1570s, Francesco I de' Medici decided to build a pleasure ground that would amaze Europe. He commissioned Bernardo Buontalenti, an architect, engineer and theatre designer, and the result was a park of grottoes, fountains, water-powered automata and hidden jets, which wrecked visitors' clothes and delighted them in equal measure. The great survivor is the Appennine, a gigantic statue by Giambologna, about ten metres high, crouched beside a pond, a stone giant with caves inside his body and a face emerging from rock and moss. It is one of the strangest and most impressive garden sculptures in Italy.
Read the complete Jardin de Pratolino write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Jardin de Pratolino is where the day begins. Next is Villa de Poggio a Caiano.
Of all the Medici villas, Poggio a Caiano is the one that changed architecture. Lorenzo the Magnificent commissioned it from Giuliano da Sangallo in the 1480s, and the result was something new: a country house raised on an arcaded platform, with a portico topped by a classical pediment, the first time a temple front had been put on a private villa since antiquity. Palladio would develop the idea in the Veneto decades later. Inside, the great hall is decorated with frescoes by Andrea del Sarto, Pontormo and others, and Pontormo's lunette of Vertumnus and Pomona, with its lazy figures lounging on a wall, is one of the most charming paintings of the Renaissance. The villa is part of the UNESCO listing of the Medici Villas and Gardens in Tuscany.
Read the complete Villa de Poggio a Caiano write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Villa de Poggio a Caiano comes up about 30 km into the recorded legs. Next is Montecatini Terme.
The water at Montecatini has been drunk for health since the Middle Ages, but it was in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that the town became one of the great spa resorts of Europe, with grand thermal establishments built in neoclassical, Liberty and Art Deco styles, set in parks of plane trees and pines. The Tettuccio, with its marble colonnades and frescoes, is the most famous, a temple of water where visitors drink from taps along a counter. In 2021 Montecatini became part of the Great Spa Towns of Europe World Heritage Site, alongside Baden-Baden, Bath, Vichy and others.
Read the complete Montecatini Terme write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 68 km into the recorded legs you reach Montecatini Terme. 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.
Piazza del Duomo, about halfway. Next is back through Montecatini Terme.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Montecatini Terme write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Montecatini Terme sits at 143 km, about halfway. Next is back through Villa de Poggio a Caiano.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Villa de Poggio a Caiano write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Villa de Poggio a Caiano comes up about 216 km into the recorded legs. Next is Jardin de Pratolino.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Jardin de Pratolino write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Jardin de Pratolino closes the day.
Jardin de Pratolino → Villa de Poggio a Caiano is 30 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Villa de Poggio a Caiano → Montecatini Terme is 38 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Montecatini Terme → Piazza del Duomo is 55 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Piazza del Duomo → back through Montecatini Terme is 55 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Montecatini Terme → back through Villa de Poggio a Caiano is 38 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Villa de Poggio a Caiano → Jardin de Pratolino is 28 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.