Villa Pojana and Tombola

Waypoint introductions and full write-ups

1. 1. Villa Pojana

   Andrea Palladio could make a farmhouse look like a temple, and at Villa Pojana he did it with remarkable restraint. Built in the mid-sixteenth century for Bonifacio Pojana, a nobleman with military ambitions, the villa stands in the village of Poiana Maggiore in the flat country south of Vicenza. Its facade is almost bare: a great arched entrance framed by a Serlian motif with round windows, a pediment above, smooth plaster walls. The interior has frescoes by artists of the time. Like other Palladian villas of the Veneto, it counts as one component of UNESCO's inscription of the city of Vicenza and the villas around it.

   Read the complete Villa Pojana write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Villa Pojana is where the day begins. Next is Villa Pisani Ferri.

2. 2. 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.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Villa Pisani Ferri comes up about 18 km into the recorded legs. Next is Tombola.

3. 3. Tombola

   In the flat, fertile plain south of Verona, near the town of Cerea, a low rise in the fields called Tombola hides the remains of a Bronze Age settlement. The site is listed among the prehistoric pile dwellings around the Alps, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and it belongs to a group of wetland villages that once stood among the marshes of the Valli Grandi Veronesi, a large area of wetland that was drained and reclaimed over the centuries.

   Read the complete Tombola write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   about 54 km into the recorded legs you reach Tombola. Next is back through Villa Pisani Ferri.

4. 4. back through Villa Pisani Ferri

   Return visit. Read the place description above.

   Read the complete Villa Pisani Ferri write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   back through Villa Pisani Ferri, late in the day. Next is Villa Pojana.

5. 5. Villa Pojana

   Return visit. Read the place description above.

   Read the complete Villa Pojana write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Back at Villa Pojana. That is the ride.