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 285 km round trip from Bassano del Grappa - roughly 4 h 44 in the saddle. It goes by way of Villa Gazzotti Grimani, Palazzo de la Ragione Chapel of the Carare, Villa Foscari and Scrovegni Chapel Church of the Eremitani. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 850 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. It suits an unhurried touring pace.
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 is where the day begins. Next is Villa Gazzotti Grimani.
Palladio is the reason most people know the Veneto's villas, and this was one of his first. Villa Gazzotti Grimani stands at Bertesina, just west of Vicenza on the edge of the flat plain, and dates from the early 1540s, when Andrea Palladio was still a stonemason's apprentice turned architect, not yet the man whose Four Books would shape buildings from Virginia to St Petersburg. It was designed for the Gazzotti family and later passed to the Grimani, whose name remained attached. The plan is bold: a centre block with a loggia stacked above a loggia, and a pair of wings that were meant to curve forward but were never completed.
Read the complete Villa Gazzotti Grimani write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Villa Gazzotti Grimani comes up about 33 km into the recorded legs. Next is Palazzo de la Ragione Chapel of the Carare.
Padua's Palazzo della Ragione is the big hall that sits between the two market squares, Piazza delle Erbe and Piazza della Frutta, and it has done that job since the early thirteenth century, when the city was a self-governing commune and wanted a building big enough for its courts. The enormous upper hall, with a roof shaped like an upturned ship's keel, is said to be one of the largest medieval halls in Europe, its walls covered in astrological frescoes and a giant wooden horse standing at one end. Downstairs the arcades still house butchers, cheesemongers and cafes, which is the best sign that the building has remained a living part of town.
Read the complete Palazzo de la Ragione Chapel of the Carare write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 70 km into the recorded legs you reach Palazzo de la Ragione Chapel of the Carare. Next is Villa Foscari.
Locals call it La Malcontenta, the unhappy woman, and the stories about who she was are better than any of them can prove. The legend says a Foscari wife was banished here for her bad behaviour in Venice; the duller truth is that the name probably came from the area or a nearby canal long before the villa existed. Either way, the house Andrea Palladio built for the brothers Nicolò and Alvise Foscari around 1560 is one of his masterpieces, a temple-fronted block raised on a high base above the Brenta canal, looking out over the water like a Roman villa that had wandered down to the lagoon. It forms part of the UNESCO listing of the City of Vicenza and the Palladian Villas of the Veneto.
Read the complete Villa Foscari write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Villa Foscari, about halfway. Next is Scrovegni Chapel Church of the Eremitani.
Giotto painted the Scrovegni Chapel in about two years, between 1303 and 1305, and it changed how Europeans drew people. Before him faces were icons; here they are tired, tender, furious, ashamed. The chapel was commissioned by Enrico Scrovegni, whose father Reginaldo was a moneylender so notorious that Dante put him in hell. Enrico built the chapel beside the family palace, so the story goes, to ease his father's soul, and the result is a small brick box covered inside with a blue ceiling of gold stars and thirty-odd scenes from the lives of Mary and Christ, ending with a vast Last Judgment on the west wall.
Read the complete Scrovegni Chapel Church of the Eremitani write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Scrovegni Chapel Church of the Eremitani sits at 141 km, about halfway. Next is back through Villa Foscari.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Villa Foscari write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Villa Foscari comes up about 166 km into the recorded legs. Next is back through Palazzo de la Ragione Chapel of the Carare.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Palazzo de la Ragione Chapel of the Carare write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 205 km into the recorded legs you reach back through Palazzo de la Ragione Chapel of the Carare. Next is back through Villa Gazzotti Grimani.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Villa Gazzotti Grimani write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Villa Gazzotti Grimani, late in the day. Next is 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.
The route ends here after 285 km.
Villa Angarano → Villa Gazzotti Grimani is 33 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Villa Gazzotti Grimani → Palazzo de la Ragione Chapel of the Carare is 37 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Palazzo de la Ragione Chapel of the Carare → Villa Foscari is 32 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Villa Foscari → Scrovegni Chapel Church of the Eremitani is 33 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Scrovegni Chapel Church of the Eremitani → back through Villa Foscari is 31 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Villa Foscari → back through Palazzo de la Ragione Chapel of the Carare is 39 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Palazzo de la Ragione Chapel of the Carare → back through Villa Gazzotti Grimani is 36 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Villa Gazzotti Grimani → Villa Angarano is 44 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.