The recorded total and the leg detail need reconciliation. Inspect the leg notes before using this record for timing or navigation. 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.
From Fratta Polesine it runs 346 km to Fratta Polesine; allow about 5 h 30 of riding. It goes by way of Villa Pisani, Villa Chiericati, Villa Godi Malinverni and Villa Barbaro. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 950 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. The line favours views over speed.
Waypoint introductions and full write-ups
1. Villa Badoer
Fratta Polesine is a quiet village in the Polesine, the flat, fertile land between the Adige and the Po in the south of the Veneto, and its pride is a villa by Andrea Palladio. Villa Badoer, built in the 1550s for Francesco Badoer, a Venetian nobleman, stands on a raised platform above the surrounding fields, with a temple-front portico, curved colonnades sweeping out on either side to farm buildings, and a grand staircase. It was the first of Palladio's villas to use the curved barchesse, and it is part of the UNESCO-listed City of Vicenza and the Palladian Villas of the Veneto. Inside, the walls carry frescoes, and the villa houses a museum about the Polesine and its history.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
Villa Badoer is where the day begins. Next is Villa Pisani.
2. Villa Pisani
Montagnana is one of the best-preserved walled towns in Europe, with its entire ring of medieval brick walls, towers and gates still standing around the old centre, and just outside the eastern gate stands a villa by Andrea Palladio. Villa Pisani at Montagnana, built for Francesco Pisani in the 1550s, is a two-storey palace with a classical façade facing the road, part of the UNESCO listing of the City of Vicenza and the Palladian Villas of the Veneto. Unlike most of Palladio's country villas, it sits right at the edge of town, more urban palazzo than farmhouse, and its elegant columns make a striking contrast with the rugged walls nearby.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
Villa Pisani comes up 41 km in. Next is Villa Chiericati.
3. Villa Chiericati
Villa Chiericati stands in the flat countryside east of Vicenza, at Vancimuglio near Grumolo delle Abbadesse, a cube of pale plaster with a deep, columned portico that looks as if a Roman temple has been grafted onto a farmhouse. That is precisely what Palladio intended. Designed in the 1550s for Giovanni Chiericati, it is often cited as one of the first villas in which he gave the main façade a full temple front, an idea he would repeat, refine and make famous, and which architects copied for centuries afterwards, from English country houses to the American South. Like the other Palladian villas of the Veneto, it is part of the UNESCO site that includes the city of Vicenza.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
83 km in you reach Villa Chiericati. Next is Villa Godi Malinverni.
4. 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.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
Villa Godi Malinverni, about halfway. Next is Villa Barbaro.
5. 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.