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.
From Florence it runs 432 km to Florence; allow about 7 h 22 of riding. The stops in between: Sasso Fratino, Vena del Gesso Romagnola - M.te Casino and back through Sasso Fratino. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 800 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. The line favours views over speed.
Poggio Imperiale announces itself with an avenue, a long, straight, cypress-lined approach running up from Porta Romana in Florence, with statues in niches and the villa waiting at the top like the end of a sentence. It began as a Medici property in the sixteenth century, but its grand form came in the 1620s, when Maria Maddalena of Austria, wife of Cosimo II, enlarged it and gave it the name Imperiale in a nod to her Habsburg origins. The cool neoclassical front you see today was added in the early nineteenth century under Napoleonic rule.
Read the complete Villa du Poggio Imperiale write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Villa du Poggio Imperiale is where the day begins. Next is Sasso Fratino.
Sasso Fratino is a forest you are not allowed to enter, and that is precisely the point. High on the Romagna side of the Apennine ridge, in the national park of the Casentino forests, it was declared Italy's first integral nature reserve in 1959, and since then nature has been left almost entirely to itself. Ancient beech woods cling to steep slopes, with silver fir, maple and ash mixed in, and dead trees are left to rot where they fall, feeding fungi, beetles and birds. In 2017 it became part of the transnational World Heritage listing of ancient beech forests of Europe.
Read the complete Sasso Fratino write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Sasso Fratino comes up about 66 km into the recorded legs. Next is Vena del Gesso Romagnola - M.te Casino, 64 km on.
Crystals the size of a hand catch the sun along the Vena del Gesso, a ridge of selenite gypsum that runs for some twenty-five kilometres across the hills of Romagna, from the Sillaro valley to the Lamone. The rock formed millions of years ago when the Mediterranean dried up and its salts were deposited, and it has since been carved by water into caves, sinkholes and blind valleys. In 2023, UNESCO listed the evaporite karst and caves of the northern Apennines, and the Vena del Gesso is the heart of it. Monte Casino is one of the peaks on the ridge, near Borgo Tossignano and Casola Valsenio.
Read the complete Vena del Gesso Romagnola - M.te Casino write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 217 km into the recorded legs you reach Vena del Gesso Romagnola - M.te Casino. Next is back through Sasso Fratino.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Sasso Fratino write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Sasso Fratino, late in the day. Next is Villa du Poggio Imperiale.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Villa du Poggio Imperiale write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Villa du Poggio Imperiale. That is the ride.
Villa du Poggio Imperiale → Sasso Fratino is 66 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Sasso Fratino → Vena del Gesso Romagnola - M.te Casino is 151 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Vena del Gesso Romagnola - M.te Casino → back through Sasso Fratino is 150 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through Sasso Fratino → Villa du Poggio Imperiale is 66 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.