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.
334 km from Vicenza to Vicenza, about 6 h 00 of riding. The stops in between: Villa Angarano, Villa Cornaro, Venice and its Lagoon and Villa Zeno. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 850 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. The line favours views over speed.
Slow enough to look. The surface follows the shoreline, so the corners arrive where the water decided, not where an engineer did. Water arrives beside the road and stays for 44 km. The line follows the shore because there is nowhere else for it to go.
Palladio is the reason most people know the Veneto's villas, and this was one of his first. Villa Gazzotti Grimani stands at Bertesina, just west of Vicenza on the edge of the flat plain, and dates from the early 1540s, when Andrea Palladio was still a stonemason's apprentice turned architect, not yet the man whose Four Books would shape buildings from Virginia to St Petersburg. It was designed for the Gazzotti family and later passed to the Grimani, whose name remained attached. The plan is bold: a centre block with a loggia stacked above a loggia, and a pair of wings that were meant to curve forward but were never completed.
Read the complete Villa Gazzotti Grimani write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Villa Gazzotti Grimani is where the day begins. Next is Villa Angarano.
Bassano del Grappa sits where the river Brenta leaves the mountains and spreads onto the Venetian plain, and its symbol is a covered wooden bridge, the Ponte Vecchio, designed by Palladio in the sixteenth century and rebuilt several times since after floods and wars. On the right bank of the river, just outside the town, stands Villa Angarano, a country house whose two long colonnaded wings were designed by Palladio, while the central residence was built later, in a different style, by the Venetian architect Baldassare Longhena. The villa is still a working wine estate and belongs to the UNESCO site of the City of Vicenza and the Palladian Villas of the Veneto.
Read the complete Villa Angarano write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Villa Angarano comes up about 44 km into the recorded legs. Next is 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.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 79 km into the recorded legs you reach Villa Cornaro. Next is Venice and its Lagoon.
Venice is the only great city in Europe where your motorcycle is entirely useless. The road ends at Piazzale Roma, at the end of a long bridge across the lagoon, and from there on, everything happens on foot or by boat. The city and its lagoon are listed by UNESCO as a whole, a recognition that the islands, the canals, the salt marshes and the fishing villages form a single living system, shaped by over a thousand years of human effort to keep the sea out and the city afloat.
Read the complete Venice and its Lagoon write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Venice and its Lagoon, about halfway. Next is Villa Zeno.
Andrea Palladio designed Villa Zeno at Cessalto in the middle of the sixteenth century, and it stands among the flat fields of the lower Piave plain, about five kilometres from the little town of Ceggia and not far from the Livenza river. It is one of the villas of the Veneto that were collectively inscribed on the World Heritage list, and it is quite different from the grand Palladian pieces near Vicenza: an agricultural house, plain and practical, with a broad central block and a pair of long service wings.
Read the complete Villa Zeno write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Villa Zeno sits at 170 km, about halfway. Next is back through Venice and its Lagoon.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Venice and its Lagoon write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Venice and its Lagoon comes up about 229 km into the recorded legs. Next is back through Villa Cornaro.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Villa Cornaro write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 265 km into the recorded legs you reach back through Villa Cornaro. Next is back through Villa Angarano.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Villa Angarano write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Villa Angarano, late in the day. Next is Villa Gazzotti Grimani.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Villa Gazzotti Grimani write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The route ends here after 334 km.
Villa Gazzotti Grimani → Villa Angarano is 44 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Villa Angarano → Villa Cornaro is 35 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Villa Cornaro → Venice and its Lagoon is 37 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Venice and its Lagoon → Villa Zeno is 56 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Villa Zeno → back through Venice and its Lagoon is 57 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Venice and its Lagoon → back through Villa Cornaro is 36 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Villa Cornaro → back through Villa Angarano is 35 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Villa Angarano → Villa Gazzotti Grimani is 33 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.