Villa Cornaro and City of Verona

Waypoint introductions and full write-ups

1. 1. 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.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Villa Cornaro is where the day begins. Next is Villa Saraceno.

2. 2. Villa Saraceno

   In the countryside south of the Berici Hills, near the village of Agugliaro, Villa Saraceno is one of the simplest and most elegant of Andrea Palladio's villas, built in the mid-sixteenth century for Biagio Saraceno, a Vicentine nobleman. It is a compact building with a classical portico of arches and a triangular pediment, set among farmland, and it is part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site of the City of Vicenza and the Palladian Villas of the Veneto.

   Read the complete Villa Saraceno write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Villa Saraceno comes up about 76 km into the recorded legs. Next is City of Verona.

3. 3. City of Verona

   Verona is where the north of Italy starts to feel like the south, and where history piles up in layers so thick that you trip over them. The Roman amphitheatre, the Arena, still dominates Piazza Bra and still hosts opera in summer, with tens of thousands of people sitting on stone steps two thousand years old. The Adige river swings through town in a double bend, crossed by bridges including the Ponte Pietra, part Roman and rebuilt after the Germans blew it up in 1945. And of course there is Juliet's balcony, which was added to a medieval house in the twentieth century to satisfy visitors searching for the Shakespeare story; people queue to rub the breast of her bronze statue for luck.

   Read the complete City of Verona write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   about 142 km into the recorded legs you reach City of Verona. Next is back through Villa Saraceno.

4. 4. back through Villa Saraceno

   Return visit. Read the place description above.

   Read the complete Villa Saraceno write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   back through Villa Saraceno, late in the day. Next is Villa Cornaro.

5. 5. Villa Cornaro

   Return visit. Read the place description above.

   Read the complete Villa Cornaro write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Back at Villa Cornaro. That is the ride.