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.
328 km from Varallo to Varallo, about 6 h 28 of riding. On the way it passes Mercurago, Sacro Monte del Rosario di Varese, Sacri Monti of Piedmont and Lombardy and back through Sacro Monte del Rosario di Varese. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 1,600 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 64 km this is Grand Tour of Switzerland, a road with a name of its own and a reason for it.
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 is where the day begins. Next is Mercurago.
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 comes up about 49 km into the recorded legs. Next is Sacro Monte del Rosario di Varese.
Above Varese, on the flank of the Campo dei Fiori, a cobbled path climbs two kilometres or so through woods and past fourteen chapels to a medieval sanctuary and the tiny village of Santa Maria del Monte. Each chapel contains a life-size scene of the mysteries of the Rosary, with painted terracotta figures and frescoed backgrounds, and the whole ensemble, built in the seventeenth century under the architect Giuseppe Bernascone, is one of the nine Sacri Monti of Piedmont and Lombardy inscribed as a World Heritage Site in 2003.
Read the complete Sacro Monte del Rosario di Varese 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 del Rosario di Varese. Next is Sacri Monti of Piedmont and Lombardy.
On the western shore of Lake Como, above the village of Ossuccio and facing the little Isola Comacina, a cobbled path climbs the hillside through olive groves and woods, past fourteen small chapels, to a sanctuary at the top. This is the Sacro Monte of Ossuccio, one of nine sacred mountains in Piedmont and Lombardy listed together by UNESCO. Built in the seventeenth century, the chapels illustrate the Mysteries of the Rosary with life-size terracotta and plaster figures arranged in dramatic scenes, each one a small piece of theatre.
Read the complete Sacri Monti of Piedmont and Lombardy write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Sacri Monti of Piedmont and Lombardy, about halfway. Next is back through Sacro Monte del Rosario di Varese.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Sacro Monte del Rosario di Varese write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Sacro Monte del Rosario di Varese sits at 144 km, about halfway. Next is back through 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.
back through Mercurago comes up about 278 km into the recorded legs. Next is 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.
Sacro Monte o “Nuova Gerusalemme” di Varal closes the day.
Sacro Monte o “Nuova Gerusalemme” di Varal → Mercurago is 49 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Mercurago → Sacro Monte del Rosario di Varese is 51 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Sacro Monte del Rosario di Varese → Sacri Monti of Piedmont and Lombardy is 64 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Sacri Monti of Piedmont and Lombardy → back through Sacro Monte del Rosario di Varese is 63 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Sacro Monte del Rosario di Varese → back through Mercurago is 51 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Mercurago → Sacro Monte o “Nuova Gerusalemme” di Varal is 49 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.