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 Noventa Vicentina it runs 154 km to Noventa Vicentina; allow about 2 h 57 of riding. The stops in between: Laghetto della Costa, Basilica and Monastery of St. Anthony Orat, Villa Cornaro and back through Basilica and Monastery of St. Anthony Orat. The line favours views over speed.
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.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Villa Pojana is where the day begins. Next is Laghetto della Costa.
The Euganean Hills rise abruptly from the flat plain south-west of Padua, a cluster of volcanic cones covered in vineyards, chestnut woods and olive groves. Arquà Petrarca, a medieval village on the southern slopes, is where the poet Petrarch spent his last years and died in 1374; his house can still be visited. Close by, in a small hollow between the hills, lies the Laghetto della Costa, a tiny lake that hides a big secret.
Read the complete Laghetto della Costa write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Laghetto della Costa comes up about 24 km into the recorded legs. Next is Basilica and Monastery of St. Anthony Orat, 28 km on.
Padua, in the Veneto, has one of the great pilgrimage churches of Europe, and it is the grave of a Portuguese friar. Anthony of Padua was born in Lisbon, joined the Franciscans and became a famous preacher, and he died near Padua in 1231 at the age of thirty-six. He was made a saint within a year, one of the fastest canonisations in history, and construction of the great basilica began soon after. The Basilica of Saint Anthony, which the people of Padua simply call il Santo, is a church of many domes, partly Romanesque and partly Gothic with a hint of Byzantine, and it holds the saint's tomb in a side chapel, where pilgrims press their hands against the marble.
Read the complete Basilica and Monastery of St. Anthony Orat write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 45 km into the recorded legs you reach Basilica and Monastery of St. Anthony Orat. 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.
Villa Cornaro, about halfway. Next is back through Basilica and Monastery of St. Anthony Orat, 27 km on.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Basilica and Monastery of St. Anthony Orat write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Basilica and Monastery of St. Anthony Orat sits at 111 km, about halfway. Next is back through Laghetto della Costa.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Laghetto della Costa write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Laghetto della Costa comes up about 130 km into the recorded legs. Next is Villa Pojana.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Villa Pojana write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Villa Pojana closes the day.
Villa Pojana → Laghetto della Costa is 24 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Laghetto della Costa → Basilica and Monastery of St. Anthony Orat is 21 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Basilica and Monastery of St. Anthony Orat → Villa Cornaro is 31 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Villa Cornaro → back through Basilica and Monastery of St. Anthony Orat is 31 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Basilica and Monastery of St. Anthony Orat → back through Laghetto della Costa is 23 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Laghetto della Costa → Villa Pojana is 24 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.