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.
222 km from Terracina to Terracina, about 4 h 28 of riding. It goes by way of The Via Appia at the Itri Pass, Minturnae and the Garigliano crossing, Ancient Capua and back through Minturnae and the Garigliano crossing. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
Terracina is the point where the Via Appia, the queen of roads, meets the sea after its long straight run from Rome across the Pontine plain. The Romans built the road in 312 BC under the censor Appius Claudius, and for its time it was a marvel: paved, drained and as straight as engineering allowed, linking Rome to Capua and later to Brindisi. The stretch through the Pontine marshes was notorious for mosquitoes and malaria, and travellers often took a canal boat alongside the road instead, as the poet Horace describes in one of his satires.
Read the complete Via Appia. Regina Viarum write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Via Appia. Regina Viarum is where the day begins. Next is The Via Appia at the Itri Pass.
Ancient Rome's first great highway, the Via Appia, was begun in 312 BC by the censor Appius Claudius Caecus, and it ran from Rome south to Capua and later on to Brindisi on the Adriatic. At Itri, in the hills behind the Gulf of Gaeta, it squeezes through a narrow pass between the Monti Aurunci and the sea, and the road still crosses the same gap today. A stretch of the old paved line survives near the pass, with its big, rounded basalt blocks, though you will need to get off the main road and look carefully to find it.
Read the complete The Via Appia at the Itri Pass write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The Via Appia at the Itri Pass comes up about 27 km into the recorded legs. 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.
about 58 km into the recorded legs you reach Minturnae and the Garigliano crossing. 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 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 sits at 159 km, about halfway. Next is back through The Via Appia at the Itri Pass.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete The Via Appia at the Itri Pass write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through The Via Appia at the Itri Pass comes up about 194 km into the recorded legs. Next is Via Appia. Regina Viarum, 40 km on.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Via Appia. Regina Viarum write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Via Appia. Regina Viarum closes the day.
Via Appia. Regina Viarum → The Via Appia at the Itri Pass is 27 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
The Via Appia at the Itri Pass → Minturnae and the Garigliano crossing is 31 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 → 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 → back through The Via Appia at the Itri Pass is 33 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through The Via Appia at the Itri Pass → Via Appia. Regina Viarum is 27 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.