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 400 km round trip from Piadena - roughly 6 h 16 in the saddle. The stops in between: Mantua and Sabbioneta, Fortified city of Peschiera del Garda, The monumental area with the monastic comp and Parco Comunale di Luine di Darfo-Boario Te. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 1,650 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. The line favours views over speed.
Expect company on a summer weekend. Early is better than fast. For about 46 km this is Lake Garda Western Shore and Strada della Forra, a road with a name of its own and a reason for it.
Four thousand years ago people built a village on stilts at the edge of a marsh here, and the muck preserved it. The Lagazzi del Vho site, near Piadena in the Po plain, was a Bronze Age settlement raised on wooden piles above a wetland, and thousands of its timbers, pots and tools lay waterlogged in the mud until archaeologists recovered them. It is one of the prehistoric pile dwelling sites around the Alps that UNESCO listed in 2011, and Italy has several. You will not see houses, since the evidence lies buried, but you will see a flat green plain that was once water, and a good museum in the town explains the finds.
Read the complete Lagazzi del Vho write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Lagazzi del Vho is where the day begins. Next is Mantua and Sabbioneta.
Approach Mantua from the north across the causeway and you see why it was so hard to conquer: the city rises from water on three sides, encircled by lakes formed from the river Mincio, its domes and towers reflected in the still surface. For nearly four centuries it belonged to the Gonzaga family, who turned a marshy town into one of the most brilliant courts of the Renaissance, and Mantua is listed by UNESCO together with Sabbioneta, the small ideal city that a branch of the same family built some thirty kilometres away.
Read the complete Mantua and Sabbioneta write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Mantua and Sabbioneta comes up about 40 km into the recorded legs. Next is 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.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 95 km into the recorded legs you reach Fortified city of Peschiera del Garda. Next is The monumental area with the monastic comp.
The centre of Brescia holds two thousand years of layered history within a few hundred metres. Along the old Roman main street, the Capitolium temple raised under Vespasian still lifts its columns above the forum, with a Roman theatre beside it, and a short walk away the monastery of San Salvatore and Santa Giulia spreads its cloisters and churches over the site of Roman houses. The monastery was founded in the eighth century by Desiderius, the last king of the Lombards, and his wife Ansa; their daughter Ermengarda, rejected by Charlemagne, is said to have ended her days here.
Read the complete The monumental area with the monastic comp write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The monumental area with the monastic comp, about halfway. Next is Parco Comunale di Luine di Darfo-Boario Te.
Valcamonica, the long valley of the Oglio river north of Lake Iseo, holds one of the largest collections of prehistoric rock carvings in the world, with hundreds of thousands of figures pecked into smooth glacier-polished rocks over thousands of years. It was the first site in Italy to be listed by UNESCO, in 1979. The Luine park, on a wooded hill above Darfo Boario Terme at the southern end of the valley, is one of the places where you can see these engravings up close, with paths leading between rock surfaces covered in figures of animals, people, weapons and mysterious symbols.
Read the complete Parco Comunale di Luine di Darfo-Boario Te write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Parco Comunale di Luine di Darfo-Boario Te sits at 191 km, about halfway. Next is back through The monumental area with the monastic comp.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete The monumental area with the monastic comp write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through The monumental area with the monastic comp comes up about 261 km into the recorded legs. Next is back through Fortified city of Peschiera del Garda.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Fortified city of Peschiera del Garda write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 308 km into the recorded legs you reach back through Fortified city of Peschiera del Garda. Next is back through Mantua and Sabbioneta.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Mantua and Sabbioneta write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Mantua and Sabbioneta, late in the day. Next is Lagazzi del Vho.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Lagazzi del Vho write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The route ends here after 400 km.
Lagazzi del Vho → Mantua and Sabbioneta is 40 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Mantua and Sabbioneta → Fortified city of Peschiera del Garda is 55 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Fortified city of Peschiera del Garda → The monumental area with the monastic comp is 46 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
The monumental area with the monastic comp → Parco Comunale di Luine di Darfo-Boario Te is 60 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Parco Comunale di Luine di Darfo-Boario Te → back through The monumental area with the monastic comp is 60 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through The monumental area with the monastic comp → back through Fortified city of Peschiera del Garda is 47 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Fortified city of Peschiera del Garda → back through Mantua and Sabbioneta is 53 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Mantua and Sabbioneta → Lagazzi del Vho is 38 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.