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.
A 320 km round trip from Torre Annunziata - roughly 5 h 54 in the saddle. The stops in between: Costiera Amalfitana, Marechiaro, Ancient Capua and back through Marechiaro. 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 40 km this is Amalfi Coast Road, a road with a name of its own and a reason for it.
Under the shadow of Vesuvius, in the middle of a modern working town, there is a Roman villa that was buried in the same eruption of AD 79 that destroyed Pompeii. Torre Annunziata stands on the ancient site of Oplontis, a seaside suburb of Pompeii, and its two excavated villas are part of the UNESCO listing of Pompeii, Herculaneum and Torre Annunziata, inscribed in 1997. Villa A, the grander one, is famous for its frescoes and is linked with Poppaea Sabina, the wife of Nero. Villa B, the one on this ride, is different, a commercial building where wine and other goods were stored and traded, with a large courtyard and many amphorae found when it was dug up.
Read the complete Torre Annunziata: Villa B write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Torre Annunziata: Villa B is where the day begins. 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 comes up about 40 km into the recorded legs. Next is Marechiaro.
There is a song about Marechiaro, and for once the song is not exaggerating. The little fishing hamlet on the Posillipo headland, at the western edge of the Bay of Naples, inspired a poem by Salvatore Di Giacomo in the 1880s about a window and a flower, and Francesco Paolo Tosti set it to music, so that "Marechiare" has been sung in Neapolitan kitchens and concert halls ever since. Locals will point out the so-called Fenestella, a small window on a wall above the sea, as the very one. Whether the poet had it in mind or not is a matter for a pleasant argument over a plate of fried fish.
Read the complete Marechiaro write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 113 km into the recorded legs you reach Marechiaro. 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.
Ancient Capua, about halfway. Next is back through Marechiaro.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Marechiaro write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Marechiaro sits at 162 km, about halfway. Next is back through Costiera Amalfitana.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Costiera Amalfitana write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Costiera Amalfitana comes up about 280 km into the recorded legs. Next is Torre Annunziata: Villa B.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Torre Annunziata: Villa B write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Torre Annunziata: Villa B closes the day.
Torre Annunziata: Villa B → Costiera Amalfitana is 40 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Costiera Amalfitana → Marechiaro is 73 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Marechiaro → Ancient Capua is 46 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Ancient Capua → back through Marechiaro is 50 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Marechiaro → back through Costiera Amalfitana is 71 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Costiera Amalfitana → Torre Annunziata: Villa B is 41 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.