Why this ride
From Vicenza it runs 295 km to Vicenza; allow about 5 h 25 of riding. It goes by way of Villa Pojana, Tombola, Mantua and Sabbioneta and Sabbioneta. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
Villa Almerico Capra and Sabbioneta
Plan this ride
- Recorded distance
- 295 km
- Riding-time estimate
- 5 h 25
- Journey
- Recorded itinerary
Distance and timing basis
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.
Waypoint introductions and full write-ups
1. Villa Almerico Capra
The Villa Almerico Capra, known as La Rotonda, stands on a small hill above Vicenza, and it is one of the most copied buildings in the history of architecture. Andrea Palladio began it in the 1560s for a retired papal official, Paolo Almerico, who wanted a place for entertaining and for looking at the view rather than for farming. The plan is a perfect square, with a round hall under a dome at the centre, and each of the four sides has an identical portico with Ionic columns and a flight of steps, so that the house presents the same face to every direction. The idea was that the building should be an ornament to the landscape, and the landscape an ornament to the house.
Read the complete Villa Almerico Capra write-up.
Recorded stop-planning note
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
Villa Almerico Capra is where the day begins. Next is Villa Pojana.
2. Villa Pojana
Andrea Palladio could make a farmhouse look like a temple, and at Villa Pojana he did it with remarkable restraint. Built in the mid-sixteenth century for Bonifacio Pojana, a nobleman with military ambitions, the villa stands in the village of Poiana Maggiore in the flat country south of Vicenza. Its facade is almost bare: a great arched entrance framed by a Serlian motif with round windows, a pediment above, smooth plaster walls. The interior has frescoes by artists of the time. Like other Palladian villas of the Veneto, it counts as one component of UNESCO's inscription of the city of Vicenza and the villas around it.
Read the complete Villa Pojana write-up.
Recorded stop-planning note
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
Villa Pojana comes up about 40 km into the recorded legs. Next is Tombola.
3. Tombola
In the flat, fertile plain south of Verona, near the town of Cerea, a low rise in the fields called Tombola hides the remains of a Bronze Age settlement. The site is listed among the prehistoric pile dwellings around the Alps, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and it belongs to a group of wetland villages that once stood among the marshes of the Valli Grandi Veronesi, a large area of wetland that was drained and reclaimed over the centuries.
Read the complete Tombola write-up.
Recorded stop-planning note
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
about 72 km into the recorded legs you reach Tombola. Next is Mantua and Sabbioneta.
4. Mantua and Sabbioneta
Approach Mantua from the north across the causeway and you see why it was so hard to conquer: the city rises from water on three sides, encircled by lakes formed from the river Mincio, its domes and towers reflected in the still surface. For nearly four centuries it belonged to the Gonzaga family, who turned a marshy town into one of the most brilliant courts of the Renaissance, and Mantua is listed by UNESCO together with Sabbioneta, the small ideal city that a branch of the same family built some thirty kilometres away.
Read the complete Mantua and Sabbioneta write-up.
Recorded stop-planning note
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
Mantua and Sabbioneta, about halfway. Next is Sabbioneta.
5. Sabbioneta
Sabbioneta is a Renaissance experiment: a whole town built from scratch in the second half of the sixteenth century by Vespasiano Gonzaga, a soldier, scholar and minor prince of the great Mantuan family, who wanted a capital laid out according to the ideals of the age. He got it. Inside its star-shaped walls the streets run in a regular grid, and in a few hundred metres you pass a ducal palace, a long gallery built to show off his collection of ancient sculpture, a summer palace, and one of the earliest purpose-built theatres in Europe, the Teatro all'Antica, designed by Vincenzo Scamozzi. Sabbioneta and Mantua were listed together by UNESCO in 2008 as two contrasting visions of the Renaissance city.
Read the complete Sabbioneta write-up.
Recorded stop-planning note
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
Sabbioneta sits at 157 km, about halfway. Next is back through Mantua and Sabbioneta.
6. back through Mantua and Sabbioneta
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Mantua and Sabbioneta write-up.
Recorded stop-planning note
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
back through Mantua and Sabbioneta comes up about 183 km into the recorded legs. Next is back through Tombola.
7. back through Tombola
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Tombola write-up.
Recorded stop-planning note
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
about 220 km into the recorded legs you reach back through Tombola. Next is back through Villa Pojana.
8. back through Villa Pojana
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Villa Pojana write-up.
Recorded stop-planning note
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
back through Villa Pojana, late in the day. Next is Villa Almerico Capra.
9. Villa Almerico Capra
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Villa Almerico Capra write-up.
Recorded stop-planning note
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
The route ends here after 295 km.
Leg by leg
Villa Almerico Capra to Villa Pojana
Villa Almerico Capra → Villa Pojana is 40 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Villa Pojana to Tombola
Villa Pojana → Tombola is 32 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Tombola to Mantua and Sabbioneta
Tombola → Mantua and Sabbioneta is 37 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Mantua and Sabbioneta to Sabbioneta
Mantua and Sabbioneta → Sabbioneta is 36 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Sabbioneta to back through Mantua and Sabbioneta
Sabbioneta → back through Mantua and Sabbioneta is 38 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Mantua and Sabbioneta to back through Tombola
back through Mantua and Sabbioneta → back through Tombola is 37 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Tombola to back through Villa Pojana
back through Tombola → back through Villa Pojana is 33 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Villa Pojana to Villa Almerico Capra
back through Villa Pojana → Villa Almerico Capra is 42 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.