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 95 km round trip from Poggio A Caiano - roughly 2 h 05 in the saddle. The stops in between: Villa de Cerreto Guidi, Montecatini Terme and back through Villa de Cerreto Guidi. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
The Medici liked to hunt, and Ferdinando I wanted somewhere to do it. In the late sixteenth century the grand duke commissioned the architect Bernardo Buontalenti to build him a hunting lodge on the hill of Artimino, west of Florence, and the result was a large, plain and strangely beautiful villa with a loggia, a terrace and a forest of chimneys. It is nicknamed the villa of the hundred chimneys, though there are fewer than that, and the stacks along the roofline give the building a rhythm that you can recognise from a long way off. It is one of the Medici villas and gardens that UNESCO listed in 2013 for the way they shaped the Italian idea of a country house.
Read the complete Villa de Artimino write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Villa de Artimino is where the day begins. Next is Villa de Cerreto Guidi.
Cosimo I de' Medici liked to hunt, and in the 1560s he had a villa built on a hilltop at Cerreto Guidi, on the edge of the marshes and woods west of Florence, where the game was plentiful. From the outside it is austere, a solid block of stone facing a square, but the approach is spectacular: a pair of great brick ramps, known as the Medici bridges, zigzag up to the entrance. The villa is part of the UNESCO listing of the Medici Villas and Gardens in Tuscany, and it holds a dark legend. Cosimo's daughter Isabella died here in 1576, and the story goes that she was murdered by her husband, Paolo Giordano Orsini, for her alleged infidelity. Whether it is true or not, it is told to every visitor.
Read the complete Villa de Cerreto Guidi write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Villa de Cerreto Guidi comes up about 22 km into the recorded legs. Next is Montecatini Terme.
The water at Montecatini has been drunk for health since the Middle Ages, but it was in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that the town became one of the great spa resorts of Europe, with grand thermal establishments built in neoclassical, Liberty and Art Deco styles, set in parks of plane trees and pines. The Tettuccio, with its marble colonnades and frescoes, is the most famous, a temple of water where visitors drink from taps along a counter. In 2021 Montecatini became part of the Great Spa Towns of Europe World Heritage Site, alongside Baden-Baden, Bath, Vichy and others.
Read the complete Montecatini Terme write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 45 km into the recorded legs you reach Montecatini Terme. Next is back through Villa de Cerreto Guidi.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Villa de Cerreto Guidi write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Villa de Cerreto Guidi, late in the day. Next is Villa de Artimino.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Villa de Artimino write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Villa de Artimino. That is the ride.
Villa de Artimino → Villa de Cerreto Guidi is 22 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Villa de Cerreto Guidi → Montecatini Terme is 23 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Montecatini Terme → back through Villa de Cerreto Guidi is 27 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Villa de Cerreto Guidi → Villa de Artimino is 23 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.