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 Formia it runs 302 km to Formia; allow about 5 h 22 of riding. It goes by way of The Via Appia from Sinuessa to the Pagus S, Ancient Capua, Historic Centre of Naples and 18th-Century Royal Palace at Caserta with. A steady touring day rather than a sprint.
The ride follows Historic Centre of Naples → 18th-Century Royal Palace at Caserta with for 33 km.
The queen of roads, the Romans called it: the Via Appia, begun in 312 BC by the censor Appius Claudius Caecus, ran from Rome to Capua and later on to Brindisi, the gateway to Greece and the East. Near Formia, the old road comes down from the hills of Itri to the coast of the Gulf of Gaeta, and a stretch of it, with its paving stones and roadside monuments, survives in the countryside. In 2024, UNESCO listed the Via Appia as a whole, and this section between the eighty-third mile from Rome and the ancient town of Formiae is one of its pieces.
Read the complete The Via Appia from 83rd mile to Formiae write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The Via Appia from 83rd mile to Formiae is where the day begins. Next is The Via Appia from Sinuessa to the Pagus S.
The Via Appia, the Queen of Roads, ran from Rome to Brindisi, and in 2024 UNESCO inscribed long stretches of it as a single World Heritage site. Near Mondragone, on the coast of northern Campania, the road passes the site of Sinuessa, a Roman colony that once guarded the route where it reached the sea after crossing the coastal plains from the north. Not a great deal stands above ground today, so this is a place where you read the landscape rather than tour the ruins.
Read the complete The Via Appia from Sinuessa to the Pagus S write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The Via Appia from Sinuessa to the Pagus S comes up about 32 km into the recorded legs. Next is Ancient Capua.
Santa Maria Capua Vetere does not look like much as you ride in, a busy Campanian town of tangled traffic and apartment blocks, but under and around it lies ancient Capua, once one of the richest cities in Italy. The Via Appia passed straight through, and its great amphitheatre, second in size only to the Colosseum, still dominates the edge of town. This was where the gladiator schools trained their fighters, and it was from a school in Capua that Spartacus broke out in 73 BC with a band of fellow slaves, beginning the revolt that shook Rome for two years. The amphitheatre and a small gladiator museum nearby are the obvious stops, and the Mithraeum under the town, with its painted scene of the god slaying a bull, is one of the best preserved in Italy.
Read the complete Ancient Capua write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 82 km into the recorded legs you reach Ancient Capua. Next is Historic Centre of Naples.
Naples is not a city you ride through so much as one you survive and then fall in love with. The historic centre, a UNESCO site since 1995, sits on the street plan of Neapolis, the Greek new city founded around the sixth century BC, and the three ancient decumani still run straight through it, the most famous being Spaccanapoli, the street that splits Naples in two. Along them, churches, palaces, shrines, workshops and laundry-hung alleys are packed together with an intensity found nowhere else in Europe.
Read the complete Historic Centre of Naples write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Historic Centre of Naples, about halfway. Next is 18th-Century Royal Palace at Caserta with.
When Charles of Bourbon, king of Naples, decided to build a royal palace to rival Versailles, he did not do things by halves. The Reggia di Caserta, begun in 1752 to a design by Luigi Vanvitelli, is one of the largest royal palaces in the world, with some twelve hundred rooms, four inner courtyards, a theatre and a grand staircase that has appeared in films including Star Wars, where it stood in for the palace of Naboo. Behind it, a park stretches for three kilometres up the hillside, with fountains, statues and a long chain of pools and cascades fed by an aqueduct that Vanvitelli built specially, ending at a great waterfall at the top.
Read the complete 18th-Century Royal Palace at Caserta with write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
18th-Century Royal Palace at Caserta with sits at 149 km, about halfway. Next is back through Historic Centre of Naples.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Historic Centre of Naples write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Historic Centre of Naples comes up about 184 km into the recorded legs. Next is back through Ancient Capua.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Ancient Capua write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 220 km into the recorded legs you reach back through Ancient Capua. Next is back through The Via Appia from Sinuessa to the Pagus S.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete The Via Appia from Sinuessa to the Pagus S write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through The Via Appia from Sinuessa to the Pagus S, late in the day. Next is The Via Appia from 83rd mile to Formiae.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete The Via Appia from 83rd mile to Formiae write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The route ends here after 302 km.
The Via Appia from 83rd mile to Formiae → The Via Appia from Sinuessa to the Pagus S is 32 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
The Via Appia from Sinuessa to the Pagus S → Ancient Capua is 50 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Ancient Capua → Historic Centre of Naples is 37 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Historic Centre of Naples → 18th-Century Royal Palace at Caserta with is 33 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
18th-Century Royal Palace at Caserta with → back through Historic Centre of Naples is 32 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Historic Centre of Naples → back through Ancient Capua is 36 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Ancient Capua → back through The Via Appia from Sinuessa to the Pagus S is 50 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through The Via Appia from Sinuessa to the Pagus S → The Via Appia from 83rd mile to Formiae is 32 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.