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.
387 km from Prevalle to Prevalle, about 6 h 47 of riding. It goes by way of Villa Serego, Villa Pisani Ferri, City of Vicenza and the Palladian Villas o and Villa Angarano. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 850 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. 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 57 km this is Mille Miglia Historic Route Core, a road with a name of its own and a reason for it.
Lucone is a small basin in the green hills of the Valtènesi, just west of Lake Garda, and it is one of the sites in the UNESCO listing of prehistoric pile dwellings around the Alps. Once there was a little lake here, and during the Bronze Age people built villages of wooden houses raised on piles along its shore. The lake later turned to marsh and peat, which preserved the timbers, pottery and organic remains in waterlogged conditions for thousands of years. What you see today is a gentle, wooded hollow among vineyards and fields, and you need some imagination; the finds are in the archaeological museum in nearby Gavardo.
Read the complete Lucone write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Lucone is where the day begins. Next is 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.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Villa Serego comes up about 57 km into the recorded legs. Next is 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.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 114 km into the recorded legs you reach Villa Pisani Ferri. Next is City of Vicenza and the Palladian Villas o.
Andrea Palladio was a stonemason from Padua who became the most copied architect in history, and Vicenza is where he did it. Walk the main street, Corso Palladio, and you are moving through his workshop: palace after palace designed for the local nobility in the sixteenth century, with columns, pediments and proportions that ended up on English country houses, American plantation homes and Washington government buildings. The city and the villas scattered across the surrounding countryside were listed together by UNESCO for exactly that reason.
Read the complete City of Vicenza and the Palladian Villas o write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
City of Vicenza and the Palladian Villas o, about halfway. Next is Villa Angarano.
Bassano del Grappa sits where the river Brenta leaves the mountains and spreads onto the Venetian plain, and its symbol is a covered wooden bridge, the Ponte Vecchio, designed by Palladio in the sixteenth century and rebuilt several times since after floods and wars. On the right bank of the river, just outside the town, stands Villa Angarano, a country house whose two long colonnaded wings were designed by Palladio, while the central residence was built later, in a different style, by the Venetian architect Baldassare Longhena. The villa is still a working wine estate and belongs to the UNESCO site of the City of Vicenza and the Palladian Villas of the Veneto.
Read the complete Villa Angarano write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Villa Angarano sits at 172 km, about halfway. Next is back through City of Vicenza and the Palladian Villas o.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete City of Vicenza and the Palladian Villas o write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through City of Vicenza and the Palladian Villas o comes up about 242 km into the recorded legs. Next is back through Villa Pisani Ferri.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Villa Pisani Ferri write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 277 km into the recorded legs you reach back through Villa Pisani Ferri. Next is back through Villa Serego.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Villa Serego write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Villa Serego, late in the day. Next is Lucone.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Lucone write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The route ends here after 387 km.
Lucone → Villa Serego is 57 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Villa Serego → Villa Pisani Ferri is 57 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Villa Pisani Ferri → City of Vicenza and the Palladian Villas o is 34 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
City of Vicenza and the Palladian Villas o → Villa Angarano is 46 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Villa Angarano → back through City of Vicenza and the Palladian Villas o is 48 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through City of Vicenza and the Palladian Villas o → back through Villa Pisani Ferri is 35 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Villa Pisani Ferri → back through Villa Serego is 51 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Villa Serego → Lucone is 59 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.