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.
378 km from Fondi to Fondi, about 6 h 52 of riding. The stops in between: Minturnae and the Garigliano crossing, Ancient Capua, Historic Centre of Naples and Costiera Amalfitana. 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 62 km this is Amalfi Coast Road, a road with a name of its own and a reason for it.
The Via Appia, the queen of Roman roads, runs straight through the middle of Fondi, and the town's grid of streets still follows the plan of the Roman settlement it once was. Built from 312 BC to link Rome with Capua and later extended to Brindisi, the Appia crossed the coastal plain here, between the mountains and the sea, and Fondi grew up around it as a stopping place. In the historic centre, the main street follows the line of the ancient road, and stretches of the Roman walls survive, built of huge polygonal blocks. The Via Appia was recognised by UNESCO in 2024 as a World Heritage Site, with Fondi as one of its components.
Read the complete The Via Appia in Fundi write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The Via Appia in Fundi is where the day begins. Next is Minturnae and the Garigliano crossing.
Where the Via Appia crossed the River Garigliano, the Romans built a town, and armies have been fighting over the crossing ever since. Minturnae was founded as a Roman colony in the late fourth century BC on the border between Lazio and Campania, and its ruins lie beside the river near the modern town of Minturno: a theatre still used for summer performances, a forum, temples, baths, a stretch of the Via Appia's paving and the arches of an aqueduct striding across the fields. A small museum displays statues and finds from the site.
Read the complete Minturnae and the Garigliano crossing write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Minturnae and the Garigliano crossing comes up about 38 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 89 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 Costiera Amalfitana.
The Amalfi coast road is the reason many riders first dreamed of Italy, and it lives up to the legend and then some, with a few catches. The SS163 Amalfitana, carved into the cliffs above the sea in the nineteenth century, winds along the southern side of the Sorrento peninsula from Positano to Vietri sul Mare, with hundreds of bends, sheer drops, tunnels, bridges and villages clinging to the rocks. Amalfi itself, a small town of about five thousand people at the mouth of a ravine, was once a powerful maritime republic that rivalled Venice and Genoa in the Middle Ages, and its cathedral, with its striped facade and Arab-Norman cloister, is a reminder of that glory.
Read the complete Costiera Amalfitana write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Costiera Amalfitana sits at 188 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 250 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 286 km into the recorded legs you reach back through Ancient Capua. Next is back through Minturnae and the Garigliano crossing.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Minturnae and the Garigliano crossing write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Minturnae and the Garigliano crossing, late in the day. Next is The Via Appia in Fundi.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete The Via Appia in Fundi write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The route ends here after 378 km.
The Via Appia in Fundi → Minturnae and the Garigliano crossing is 38 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Minturnae and the Garigliano crossing → Ancient Capua is 51 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 → Costiera Amalfitana is 62 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Costiera Amalfitana → back through Historic Centre of Naples is 62 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 Minturnae and the Garigliano crossing is 52 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Minturnae and the Garigliano crossing → The Via Appia in Fundi is 40 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.