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.
277 km from Lugo di Vicenza to Lugo di Vicenza, about 3 h 59 of riding. It goes by way of Villa Pisani Ferri, Mantua and Sabbioneta and back through Villa Pisani Ferri. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 950 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
Palladio designed villas the way other architects write poetry, with proportion, rhythm and an ear for the landscape, and Villa Piovene at Lugo di Vicenza is one of his early ones. It stands on a slope at the foot of the Venetian pre-Alps, north of Vicenza, a stern box of pale stone fronted by a tall flight of steps and a temple-like portico of Ionic columns. The house was meant to be seen from below, rising out of the garden like a small temple, and the effect is of calm authority. Palladio is said to have designed it in the 1540s for the Piovene family, who were wealthy merchants and landowners.
Read the complete Villa Piovene write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Villa Piovene is where the day begins. 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 comes up about 59 km into the recorded legs. Next is Mantua and Sabbioneta.
Approach Mantua from the north across the causeway and you see why it was so hard to conquer: the city rises from water on three sides, encircled by lakes formed from the river Mincio, its domes and towers reflected in the still surface. For nearly four centuries it belonged to the Gonzaga family, who turned a marshy town into one of the most brilliant courts of the Renaissance, and Mantua is listed by UNESCO together with Sabbioneta, the small ideal city that a branch of the same family built some thirty kilometres away.
Read the complete Mantua and Sabbioneta write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 135 km into the recorded legs you reach Mantua and Sabbioneta. 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, late in the day. Next is Villa Piovene.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Villa Piovene write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Villa Piovene. That is the ride.
Villa Piovene → Villa Pisani Ferri is 59 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Villa Pisani Ferri → Mantua and Sabbioneta is 76 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Mantua and Sabbioneta → back through Villa Pisani Ferri is 81 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through Villa Pisani Ferri → Villa Piovene is 61 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.