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.
A 345 km round trip from Arbizzano-Santa Maria - roughly 6 h 42 in the saddle. On the way it passes Castellaro Lagusello - Fondo Tacoli, Mantua and Sabbioneta, Sabbioneta and Bassa collina reggiana. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
Andrea Palladio built many villas around the Veneto, but the one at Santa Sofia di Pedemonte, in the Valpolicella just north-west of Verona, is the oddball of the family. Commissioned by Marcantonio Serego in the mid-sixteenth century and never finished, it has none of the smooth classical calm of the Rotonda. Instead its courtyard is lined with giant Ionic columns built up from rough, rusticated blocks of local stone, as if the building were half turning back into the hillside. Only part of the planned design was completed, and the effect is wonderfully strange.
Read the complete Villa Serego write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Villa Serego is where the day begins. Next is Castellaro Lagusello - Fondo Tacoli.
South of Lake Garda, the land rises into a series of low hills, the moraines left behind by the glacier that carved the lake. Among them, in a hollow, lies a small heart-shaped lake, and on a ridge above it stands the walled village of Castellaro Lagusello, one of the most charming in Lombardy. The lake and its marshes are a nature reserve, and on its shore, at Fondo Tacoli, archaeologists found the remains of a Bronze Age pile dwelling settlement, part of the UNESCO group of prehistoric pile dwellings around the Alps.
Read the complete Castellaro Lagusello - Fondo Tacoli write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Castellaro Lagusello - Fondo Tacoli comes up about 45 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 78 km into the recorded legs you reach Mantua and Sabbioneta. Next is Sabbioneta.
Sabbioneta is a Renaissance experiment: a whole town built from scratch in the second half of the sixteenth century by Vespasiano Gonzaga, a soldier, scholar and minor prince of the great Mantuan family, who wanted a capital laid out according to the ideals of the age. He got it. Inside its star-shaped walls the streets run in a regular grid, and in a few hundred metres you pass a ducal palace, a long gallery built to show off his collection of ancient sculpture, a summer palace, and one of the earliest purpose-built theatres in Europe, the Teatro all'Antica, designed by Vincenzo Scamozzi. Sabbioneta and Mantua were listed together by UNESCO in 2008 as two contrasting visions of the Renaissance city.
Read the complete Sabbioneta write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Sabbioneta, about halfway. Next is Bassa collina reggiana.
The low hills south of Reggio Emilia, where the Po plain starts to ripple up toward the Apennines, hide a strange geology: outcrops of gypsum, the glittering crystalline rock left behind when ancient seas evaporated millions of years ago. Water dissolves gypsum easily, and over time it has carved caves, sinkholes and blind valleys into these hills. The Bassa Collina Reggiana, the low Reggio hill country, is part of the UNESCO site Evaporitic Karst and Caves of Northern Apennines, listed in 2023, and around Borzano, Albinea and Vezzano sul Crostolo you can see the white and grey gypsum cliffs poking through the woods and vineyards.
Read the complete Bassa collina reggiana write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Bassa collina reggiana sits at 175 km, about halfway. Next is back through Sabbioneta.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Sabbioneta write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Sabbioneta comes up about 232 km into the recorded legs. Next is back through Mantua and Sabbioneta.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Mantua and Sabbioneta write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 270 km into the recorded legs you reach back through Mantua and Sabbioneta. Next is back through Castellaro Lagusello - Fondo Tacoli.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Castellaro Lagusello - Fondo Tacoli write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Castellaro Lagusello - Fondo Tacoli, late in the day. Next is Villa Serego.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Villa Serego write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The route ends here after 345 km.
Villa Serego → Castellaro Lagusello - Fondo Tacoli is 45 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Castellaro Lagusello - Fondo Tacoli → Mantua and Sabbioneta is 33 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Mantua and Sabbioneta → Sabbioneta is 36 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Sabbioneta → Bassa collina reggiana is 59 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Bassa collina reggiana → back through Sabbioneta is 59 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Sabbioneta → back through Mantua and Sabbioneta is 38 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Mantua and Sabbioneta → back through Castellaro Lagusello - Fondo Tacoli is 32 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Castellaro Lagusello - Fondo Tacoli → Villa Serego is 43 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.