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 Polanco it runs 269 km to Polanco; allow about 4 h 06 of riding. On the way it passes Pre-Hispanic City of Teotihuacan, Former convent of San Francisco in Tepeji and back through Pre-Hispanic City of Teotihuacan. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 2,750 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. The line favours views over speed.
From the street, Luis Barragán's house looks like nothing. A plain facade in Tacubaya, a mixed and busy neighbourhood of Mexico City, with a wooden door and a few windows, gives no hint of the colour behind it. Barragán, the Mexican architect who won the Pritzker Prize in 1980, built the house in 1948 as his own home and studio, and he lived and worked here until his death in 1988. The UNESCO listing of 2004 recognised it as one of the key works of modern architecture, in which light, colour, silence and simple geometry do all the talking.
Read the complete Luis Barragán House and Studio write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Luis Barragán House and Studio is where the day begins. Next is Pre-Hispanic City of Teotihuacan.
When the Aztecs came across Teotihuacan, centuries after it had been abandoned, they thought it must have been built by gods and named it the place where the gods were made. The city had reached its peak between about the first and sixth centuries, with perhaps well over a hundred thousand people, a grid of streets, apartment compounds and some of the largest pyramids in the Americas. The Pyramid of the Sun is a huge stepped mass, and the Pyramid of the Moon sits at the far end of the Avenue of the Dead, a long, broad processional road that makes the city feel grand even now.
Read the complete Pre-Hispanic City of Teotihuacan write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Pre-Hispanic City of Teotihuacan comes up about 55 km into the recorded legs. Next is Former convent of San Francisco in Tepeji.
Tepeji del Río is a busy town in the state of Hidalgo, on the old road north from Mexico City, and at its heart stands a sixteenth-century Franciscan convent, one of the many fortress-like monasteries built by the friars in the first decades after the Spanish conquest to evangelise the indigenous population. The church has a sober façade, a large open atrium where crowds of converts once gathered for mass, and a cloister with traces of mural paintings. The convent stands on the Camino Real de Tierra Adentro, and it is part of the UNESCO listing of that route. Like many of these early convents, it combines European Gothic and Renaissance forms with the work of indigenous craftsmen, whose hand can be seen in the carvings and paintings.
Read the complete Former convent of San Francisco in Tepeji write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 133 km into the recorded legs you reach Former convent of San Francisco in Tepeji. Next is back through Pre-Hispanic City of Teotihuacan.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Pre-Hispanic City of Teotihuacan write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Pre-Hispanic City of Teotihuacan, late in the day. Next is Luis Barragán House and Studio.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Luis Barragán House and Studio write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Luis Barragán House and Studio. That is the ride.
Luis Barragán House and Studio → Pre-Hispanic City of Teotihuacan is 55 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Pre-Hispanic City of Teotihuacan → Former convent of San Francisco in Tepeji is 78 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Former convent of San Francisco in Tepeji → back through Pre-Hispanic City of Teotihuacan is 79 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through Pre-Hispanic City of Teotihuacan → Luis Barragán House and Studio is 57 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.