Why this ride
From Arbizzano-Santa Maria it runs 179 km to Arbizzano-Santa Maria; allow about 4 h 15 of riding. The stops in between: Fortified city of Peschiera del Garda, Lavagnone, Lucone and Lugana Vecchia.
CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
Villa Serego and Lugana Vecchia
Plan this ride
- Recorded distance
- 179 km
- Riding-time estimate
- 4 h 15
- Journey
- Recorded itinerary
Distance and timing basis
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.
Scenic road chapters
Mille Miglia Historic Route Core
Expect company on a summer weekend. Early is better than fast. For about 25 km this is Mille Miglia Historic Route Core, a road with a name of its own and a reason for it.
Chapter facts
- Length
- 25 km
- Named road
- Mille Miglia Historic Route Core
Waypoint introductions and full write-ups
1. Villa Serego
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.
Recorded stop-planning note
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
Villa Serego is where the day begins. Next is Fortified city of Peschiera del Garda.
2. Fortified city of Peschiera del Garda
Water surrounds Peschiera on every side, and that was the whole idea. The town sits where the River Mincio flows out of the southern end of Lake Garda, and in the sixteenth century the Republic of Venice turned it into a star-shaped fortress with massive pentagonal walls, bastions and moats fed by the lake and the river. Later the Austrians made it one of the four corners of the Quadrilatero, the defensive square of fortresses that guarded their hold on northern Italy in the nineteenth century. In 2017 Peschiera became part of the UNESCO listing of Venetian works of defence between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, alongside Bergamo, Palmanova and fortresses on the Adriatic.
Read the complete Fortified city of Peschiera del Garda write-up.
Recorded stop-planning note
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
Fortified city of Peschiera del Garda comes up about 25 km into the recorded legs. Next is Lavagnone.
3. Lavagnone
Lavagnone does not look like much, and that is rather the point. South of Lake Garda, behind Desenzano, the landscape is a rumple of low hills left by the glacier that once filled the lake basin, and in a hollow among them lies a small peat basin that was once a shallow lake. Around four thousand years ago, in the Bronze Age, people built houses on timber piles at its edge, and when the water level fell and the peat built up, the wood was preserved in the mud like a time capsule.
Read the complete Lavagnone write-up.
Recorded stop-planning note
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
about 42 km into the recorded legs you reach Lavagnone. Next is Lucone.
4. Lucone
Lucone is a small basin in the green hills of the Valtènesi, just west of Lake Garda, and it is one of the sites in the UNESCO listing of prehistoric pile dwellings around the Alps. Once there was a little lake here, and during the Bronze Age people built villages of wooden houses raised on piles along its shore. The lake later turned to marsh and peat, which preserved the timbers, pottery and organic remains in waterlogged conditions for thousands of years. What you see today is a gentle, wooded hollow among vineyards and fields, and you need some imagination; the finds are in the archaeological museum in nearby Gavardo.
Read the complete Lucone write-up.
Recorded stop-planning note
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
Lucone, about halfway. Next is Lugana Vecchia.
5. Lugana Vecchia
Lake Garda's southern shore is a landscape made by ice. At the end of the last glaciation a huge tongue of ice pushed out of the Alps and left behind a ring of moraine hills, curved like an amphitheatre, with the lake in the middle and the Po plain beyond. The shallow bay near Sirmione, where the lake meets the low land, was settled very early, and Lugana Vecchia is one of the prehistoric pile-dwelling sites around the Alps that UNESCO has grouped together as a World Heritage Site. Villages of timber houses on stilts stood in the shallows or on the shore here in the Bronze Age, and the wet ground preserved wood, textiles and tools that would have rotted elsewhere.
Read the complete Lugana Vecchia write-up.
Recorded stop-planning note
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
Lugana Vecchia sits at 79 km, about halfway. Next is back through Lucone.
6. back through Lucone
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Lucone write-up.
Recorded stop-planning note
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
back through Lucone comes up about 112 km into the recorded legs. Next is back through Lavagnone.
7. back through Lavagnone
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Lavagnone write-up.
Recorded stop-planning note
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
about 133 km into the recorded legs you reach back through Lavagnone. Next is back through Fortified city of Peschiera del Garda.
8. back through Fortified city of Peschiera del Garda
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Fortified city of Peschiera del Garda write-up.
Recorded stop-planning note
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
back through Fortified city of Peschiera del Garda, late in the day. Next is Villa Serego.
9. Villa Serego
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Villa Serego write-up.
Recorded stop-planning note
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
The route ends here after 179 km.
Leg by leg
Villa Serego to Fortified city of Peschiera del Garda
Villa Serego → Fortified city of Peschiera del Garda is 25 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Fortified city of Peschiera del Garda to Lavagnone
Fortified city of Peschiera del Garda → Lavagnone is 17 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Lavagnone to Lucone
Lavagnone → Lucone is 20 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Lucone to Lugana Vecchia
Lucone → Lugana Vecchia is 25 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Lugana Vecchia to back through Lucone
Lugana Vecchia → back through Lucone is 25 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Lucone to back through Lavagnone
back through Lucone → back through Lavagnone is 21 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Lavagnone to back through Fortified city of Peschiera del Garda
back through Lavagnone → back through Fortified city of Peschiera del Garda is 17 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Fortified city of Peschiera del Garda to Villa Serego
back through Fortified city of Peschiera del Garda → Villa Serego is 29 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.