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.
From Caldine it runs 420 km to Caldine; allow about 7 h 58 of riding. The stops in between: Villa La Magia, Historic Centre of San Gimignano, Historic Centre of Siena and Val d'Orcia. 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 42 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 La Magia.
The Medici loved the countryside, especially when it came with hunting grounds, and Villa La Magia at Quarrata was one of their country retreats at the foot of the Montalbano hills, a few kilometres south of Pistoia. Francesco I de' Medici bought it in the sixteenth century to use as a hunting lodge, and it belongs to the World Heritage inscription for the Medici villas and gardens of Tuscany. The villa is a solid rectangular building around a courtyard, more farmhouse than palace, with a park that has become home to contemporary art installations, a rather unexpected touch for a Renaissance hunting lodge.
Read the complete Villa La Magia write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Villa La Magia comes up about 42 km into the recorded legs. Next is Historic Centre of San Gimignano.
Seen from the surrounding countryside, San Gimignano looks like a medieval Manhattan: a cluster of stone towers rising from a hilltop above vineyards and olive groves in the Val d'Elsa. In its heyday, in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the town had dozens of them, built by rival families as symbols of power and wealth. Fourteen survive, enough to make it one of the most recognisable towns in Italy and a UNESCO World Heritage site since 1990.
Read the complete Historic Centre of San Gimignano write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 123 km into the recorded legs you reach Historic Centre of San Gimignano. 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, about halfway. Next is Val d'Orcia.
Every photograph you have ever seen of Tuscany with a farmhouse on a bare hill, a winding line of cypresses and a soft haze over rolling fields was probably taken somewhere close to here. The Val d'Orcia is the valley of the river Orcia, south of Siena, a farmed landscape that Renaissance landowners deliberately shaped to look like the paintings of their time. UNESCO listed it in 2004 as a landscape designed with an idea in mind, and on a clear morning that idea is very easy to grasp.
Read the complete Val d'Orcia write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Val d'Orcia sits at 178 km, about halfway. 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 comes up about 249 km into the recorded legs. Next is back through Historic Centre of San Gimignano.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Historic Centre of San Gimignano write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 293 km into the recorded legs you reach back through Historic Centre of San Gimignano. Next is back through Villa La Magia.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Villa La Magia write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Villa La Magia, late in the day. 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.
The route ends here after 420 km.
Jardin de Pratolino → Villa La Magia is 42 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Villa La Magia → Historic Centre of San Gimignano is 81 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Historic Centre of San Gimignano → Historic Centre of Siena is 48 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Historic Centre of Siena → Val d'Orcia is 38 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Val d'Orcia → back through Historic Centre of Siena is 40 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Historic Centre of Siena → back through Historic Centre of San Gimignano is 44 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Historic Centre of San Gimignano → back through Villa La Magia is 86 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Villa La Magia → Jardin de Pratolino is 41 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.