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 237 km round trip from Venice - roughly 5 h 04 in the saddle. On the way it passes Villa Cornaro, Villa Barbaro, Villa Angarano and Villa Godi Malinverni. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 950 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available.
Slow enough to look. The surface follows the shoreline, so the corners arrive where the water decided, not where an engineer did. Water arrives beside the road and stays for 44 km. The line follows the shore because there is nowhere else for it to go.
Venice is the only great city in Europe where your motorcycle is entirely useless. The road ends at Piazzale Roma, at the end of a long bridge across the lagoon, and from there on, everything happens on foot or by boat. The city and its lagoon are listed by UNESCO as a whole, a recognition that the islands, the canals, the salt marshes and the fishing villages form a single living system, shaped by over a thousand years of human effort to keep the sea out and the city afloat.
Read the complete Venice and its Lagoon write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Venice and its Lagoon is where the day begins. Next is Villa Cornaro.
Piombino Dese is a quiet village on the flat plain between Padua and Treviso, the kind of place you pass through on the way to somewhere else. Stop on the main road, though, and look at the house set back behind its lawn. Villa Cornaro was designed by Andrea Palladio in the early 1550s for Giorgio Cornaro, a member of one of the grandest Venetian families, and its central portico rises in two storeys of columns, one loggia stacked on another like a temple front on a temple front. On the garden side the same double loggia faces a long lawn. It is one of the most copied houses in architectural history, and echoes of it can be seen in country houses across England and in mansions of the American South. The villa is part of the UNESCO site of the City of Vicenza and the Palladian Villas of the Veneto, and it opens to visitors on certain days in the warmer months.
Read the complete Villa Cornaro write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Villa Cornaro comes up about 36 km into the recorded legs. Next is Villa Barbaro.
At the foot of the Asolo hills, near the village of Maser, a long, golden villa looks out over the plain with the mountains behind it. Villa Barbaro was designed by Andrea Palladio in the 1550s for the brothers Daniele and Marcantonio Barbaro, cultivated Venetian patricians, and it is one of his most perfect works, combining a central house like a temple with long arcaded wings for farm buildings. Inside, the rooms are covered with frescoes by Paolo Veronese, among the finest of the Venetian Renaissance: painted landscapes, mythological figures and trompe l'oeil doors with servants peeping through, a game of illusion that still surprises visitors. Behind the villa, a nymphaeum with statues and a pool sits against the hillside, and nearby stands the Tempietto, a small round church also designed by Palladio. The villa is part of the UNESCO site of the City of Vicenza and the Palladian Villas of the Veneto, and it remains a working estate producing wine.
Read the complete Villa Barbaro write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 65 km into the recorded legs you reach Villa Barbaro. Next is Villa Angarano.
Bassano del Grappa sits where the river Brenta leaves the mountains and spreads onto the Venetian plain, and its symbol is a covered wooden bridge, the Ponte Vecchio, designed by Palladio in the sixteenth century and rebuilt several times since after floods and wars. On the right bank of the river, just outside the town, stands Villa Angarano, a country house whose two long colonnaded wings were designed by Palladio, while the central residence was built later, in a different style, by the Venetian architect Baldassare Longhena. The villa is still a working wine estate and belongs to the UNESCO site of the City of Vicenza and the Palladian Villas of the Veneto.
Read the complete Villa Angarano write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Villa Angarano, about halfway. Next is Villa Godi Malinverni.
Every great architect has to start somewhere, and Andrea Palladio started here. Villa Godi, built for the Godi brothers in the late 1530s and early 1540s at Lugo di Vicenza, is considered his first villa, and you can already see the ideas that would make him famous: a clear, symmetrical plan, a central hall flanked by rooms in harmonious proportion, and a building set carefully into the landscape, here on a terrace looking out over the plain. It is still a little stern compared with his later villas, but the frescoes inside, by painters such as Giovanni Battista Zelotti, are lively and colourful. It is part of the UNESCO listing of the City of Vicenza and the Palladian Villas of the Veneto.
Read the complete Villa Godi Malinverni write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Villa Godi Malinverni sits at 123 km, about halfway. Next is back through Villa Angarano.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Villa Angarano write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Villa Angarano comes up about 145 km into the recorded legs. Next is back through Villa Barbaro.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Villa Barbaro write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 170 km into the recorded legs you reach back through Villa Barbaro. Next is back through Villa Cornaro.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Villa Cornaro write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Villa Cornaro, late in the day. Next is Venice and its Lagoon.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Venice and its Lagoon write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The route ends here after 237 km.
Venice and its Lagoon → Villa Cornaro is 36 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Villa Cornaro → Villa Barbaro is 29 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Villa Barbaro → Villa Angarano is 24 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Villa Angarano → Villa Godi Malinverni is 28 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Villa Godi Malinverni → back through Villa Angarano is 28 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Villa Angarano → back through Villa Barbaro is 25 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Villa Barbaro → back through Villa Cornaro is 29 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Villa Cornaro → Venice and its Lagoon is 37 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.