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 Arona it runs 456 km to Arona; allow about 8 h 30 of riding. It goes by way of Sacro Monte della SS.Trinità, Sacro Monte Calvario, Sacro Monte o “Nuova Gerusalemme” di Varal and Sacro Monte della Beata Vergine. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 1,850 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. A steady touring day rather than a sprint.
Just south of Arona, at the southern tip of Lago Maggiore, a small regional park protects a landscape of woods, meadows and peat bogs called the Lagoni di Mercurago. The lagoni are small ponds and wetlands formed after the retreat of the glaciers, and in the nineteenth century, while peat was being dug, the remains of a Bronze Age pile dwelling settlement were found here, including a wooden wheel. Mercurago is part of the UNESCO site of prehistoric pile dwellings around the Alps.
Read the complete Mercurago write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Mercurago is where the day begins. Next is Sacro Monte della SS.Trinità, 40 km on.
High above the western shore of Lake Maggiore, in a forest of chestnut and beech above the village of Ghiffa, a small sanctuary dedicated to the Holy Trinity looks out over the water to the hills of Lombardy. The Sacro Monte of Ghiffa began in the seventeenth century as a series of chapels along a path, each meant to illustrate a scene from sacred history for pilgrims, but it was never completed as planned. It is the smallest of the nine Sacri Monti of Piedmont and Lombardy listed by UNESCO in 2003, and its charm lies in its intimacy and its setting: a few chapels, a porticoed walkway and a church in the woods, with the lake shining below.
Read the complete Sacro Monte della SS.Trinità write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Sacro Monte della SS.Trinità comes up about 50 km into the recorded legs. Next is Sacro Monte Calvario.
Domodossola's holy mountain rises immediately above the town, on the wooded Mattarella hill, and the walk or ride up gives you the whole Ossola valley at your feet. The Sacro Monte Calvario was begun in the seventeenth century as a devotional path of chapels depicting the Passion of Christ, each holding painted and sculpted scenes, leading up to a sanctuary church at the top. It is one of the nine Sacri Monti of Piedmont and Lombardy inscribed together on the UNESCO list, and it has a particular link with Antonio Rosmini, the philosopher-priest who founded his religious institute here in the nineteenth century.
Read the complete Sacro Monte Calvario write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 100 km into the recorded legs you reach Sacro Monte Calvario. Next is Sacro Monte o “Nuova Gerusalemme” di Varal.
Varallo is a small town at the point where the Valsesia stops being a wide valley and starts becoming a mountain one, and above it, on a rocky spur reached by a winding road or a short cable car, is the oldest and most ambitious of the Sacri Monti. In 1491 a Franciscan friar called Bernardino Caimi, back from the Holy Land, set out to recreate Jerusalem here for pilgrims who could never make the journey. The result is a hilltop village of more than forty chapels filled with life-size painted terracotta and wooden figures, hundreds of them, telling the life of Christ like a frozen theatre. Gaudenzio Ferrari, the great Renaissance painter of this valley, worked on many of them.
Read the complete Sacro Monte o “Nuova Gerusalemme” di Varal write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Sacro Monte o “Nuova Gerusalemme” di Varal, about halfway. Next is Sacro Monte della Beata Vergine.
Oropa is a sanctuary on a scale that surprises everyone who comes up the valley from Biella for the first time. At almost twelve hundred metres, in a bowl of mountains, a vast complex of churches, courtyards, porticoes and pilgrim lodgings rises in terraces, built over several centuries around an ancient chapel that holds a Black Madonna, a wooden statue of the Virgin that legend attributes to St Luke. Above the main buildings, a Sacro Monte of chapels with life-size statues illustrates the life of Mary along a wooded path. It is one of the nine Sacri Monti of Piedmont and Lombardy listed by UNESCO in 2003, and one of the most important Marian shrines in the Alps.
Read the complete Sacro Monte della Beata Vergine write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Sacro Monte della Beata Vergine sits at 160 km, about halfway. Next is back through Sacro Monte o “Nuova Gerusalemme” di Varal.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Sacro Monte o “Nuova Gerusalemme” di Varal write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Sacro Monte o “Nuova Gerusalemme” di Varal comes up about 290 km into the recorded legs. Next is back through Sacro Monte Calvario.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Sacro Monte Calvario write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 356 km into the recorded legs you reach back through Sacro Monte Calvario. Next is back through Sacro Monte della SS.Trinità, 40 km on.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Sacro Monte della SS.Trinità write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Sacro Monte della SS.Trinità, late in the day. Next is Mercurago.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Mercurago write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The route ends here after 456 km.
Mercurago → Sacro Monte della SS.Trinità is 50 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Sacro Monte della SS.Trinità → Sacro Monte Calvario is 50 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Sacro Monte Calvario → Sacro Monte o “Nuova Gerusalemme” di Varal is 67 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Sacro Monte o “Nuova Gerusalemme” di Varal → Sacro Monte della Beata Vergine is 62 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Sacro Monte della Beata Vergine → back through Sacro Monte o “Nuova Gerusalemme” di Varal is 61 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Sacro Monte o “Nuova Gerusalemme” di Varal → back through Sacro Monte Calvario is 66 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Sacro Monte Calvario → back through Sacro Monte della SS.Trinità is 51 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Sacro Monte della SS.Trinità → Mercurago is 50 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.