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 292 km round trip from Arbizzano-Santa Maria - roughly 5 h 53 in the saddle. The stops in between: Castellaro Lagusello - Fondo Tacoli, Mantua and Sabbioneta, Bande - Corte Carpani and Mantoue. A steady touring day rather than a sprint.
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 Bande - Corte Carpani.
Corte Carpani is the kind of place that the name tells you most about. A corte in this part of Lombardy is a farm courtyard, with a farmhouse, barns and outbuildings arranged around a square, and the old estates in the Mantuan hills often kept the names of the families who owned them for a few generations. It sits among the low moraine hills south of Lake Garda, near the villages of Solferino and Cavriana, in a country of vines, maize, cypress rows and brick farm towers.
Read the complete Bande - Corte Carpani write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Bande - Corte Carpani, about halfway. Next is Mantoue.
Mantua rises out of three artificial lakes formed by the river Mincio, a Renaissance city set in the flat Po plain, and in summer the air carries the smell of water and reeds. The Gonzaga family ruled here for almost four centuries, and they turned a modest town into one of the most brilliant courts in Italy. In the Ducal Palace, a labyrinth of hundreds of rooms, Andrea Mantegna painted the Camera degli Sposi, a small chamber whose ceiling shows an illusionistic oculus with faces and cherubs peering down. Not far away, the Palazzo Te, built for Federico Gonzaga by Giulio Romano, is a pleasure villa with playful frescoes of giants falling.
Read the complete Mantoue write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Mantoue sits at 150 km, about halfway. Next is back through Bande - Corte Carpani.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Bande - Corte Carpani write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Bande - Corte Carpani comes up about 181 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 216 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 292 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 → Bande - Corte Carpani is 34 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Bande - Corte Carpani → Mantoue is 35 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Mantoue → back through Bande - Corte Carpani is 34 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Bande - Corte Carpani → back through Mantua and Sabbioneta is 35 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.