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 Mira Taglio it runs 444 km to Mira Taglio; allow about 6 h 40 of riding. It goes by way of Scrovegni Chapel Church of the Eremitani, Villa Thiene, Villa Pisani Ferri and Diamantina. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
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 is where the day begins. 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 comes up about 33 km into the recorded legs. Next is Villa Thiene.
Quinto Vicentino is a quiet farming town on the flat plain just north-east of Vicenza, and its town hall happens to be a villa by Andrea Palladio. Villa Thiene was commissioned in the sixteenth century by the brothers Marcantonio and Adriano Thiene, members of one of the most powerful families in Vicenza, and Palladio drew up a grand design for it with courtyards and wings that would have spread across the fields. Only part of that plan was ever built. What stands today is a solid, rather austere block, and the council offices are inside it, which gives the place a pleasingly everyday feeling.
Read the complete Villa Thiene write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 72 km into the recorded legs you reach Villa Thiene. Next is Villa Pisani Ferri.
Andrea Palladio was still a young architect, not long out of his training as a stonemason, when the Pisani brothers, members of a powerful Venetian family, asked him to design a country house at Bagnolo, near Lonigo, in the late 1530s or early 1540s. The result, now known as Villa Pisani Ferri, is one of his early villas, a solid, symmetrical house with a grand central hall and a facade facing the river, part of the UNESCO site of the City of Vicenza and the Palladian Villas of the Veneto. Visits depend on the owners' arrangements, so check ahead if you hope to go inside.
Read the complete Villa Pisani Ferri write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Villa Pisani Ferri, about halfway. Next is Diamantina.
The Este dukes of Ferrara loved their countryside retreats, the delizie, and they scattered them across the flat land around the city like jewels on a cloth. The Diamantina, near Vigarano Pieve west of Ferrara, was one of them, an estate of farmland, woods and buildings named after the diamond, a symbol of the Este family. The delizie are part of the UNESCO listing of Ferrara, City of the Renaissance, and its Po Delta, which recognises the city's planned urban layout and the way the Este shaped the surrounding landscape, draining marshes and creating farms and hunting grounds.
Read the complete Diamantina write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Diamantina sits at 185 km, about halfway. Next is back through Villa Pisani Ferri.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Villa Pisani Ferri write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Villa Pisani Ferri comes up about 325 km into the recorded legs. Next is back through Villa Thiene.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Villa Thiene write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 373 km into the recorded legs you reach back through Villa Thiene. Next is back through Scrovegni Chapel Church of the Eremitani.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Scrovegni Chapel Church of the Eremitani write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Scrovegni Chapel Church of the Eremitani, late in the day. Next is 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.
The route ends here after 444 km.
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 → Villa Thiene is 39 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Villa Thiene → Villa Pisani Ferri is 47 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Villa Pisani Ferri → Diamantina is 104 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Diamantina → back through Villa Pisani Ferri is 102 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through Villa Pisani Ferri → back through Villa Thiene is 48 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Villa Thiene → back through Scrovegni Chapel Church of the Eremitani is 41 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Scrovegni Chapel Church of the Eremitani → Villa Foscari is 30 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.